


Taking Breath

by apple_pi



Category: The Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Historical, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-09
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 12:26:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 24,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1106803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apple_pi/pseuds/apple_pi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Middle Ages AU, probably wildly inaccurate but very potboilery fun to write.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

****

Prelude

In the years before the Black Death came to England's green shores, life carried on in a certain order. The nobility ruled the peasants. Labour was cheap and plentiful, as the island was populous and prosperous. Reading and writing were the province of the upper classes. A small middle class of merchants existed, but by far the largest proportion of the populace consisted of the peasantry. The Church held final authority and the keys to literacy, the healing arts, and the soul. Sixty-eight years would pass before the birth of Joan of Arc; Martin Luther would not be born for 138 years. Edward III was reigning king of England.

~*~*~*~

_Loquar et respirabo paululum aperiam labia mea et respondebo._  
I will speak and take breath a little: I will open my lips, and will answer.  
Job 32:20

When William Boyd came to Manchester in 1346, he was twenty-four years old and unmarried--remarkable enough in itself. He came with his sister, Margaret, and her family--mercer husband, two babes. There was an aunt by marriage, distant relative of the Pawlet family, who invited them; a small parcel of land in the demesne of Lord Robert. They were almost but not quite peasantry, almost but not quite nobility.

Dominic was sixteen years old when first he saw William. _Bonny William_ , he thought when he heard the Scottish lilt, saw his clever small hands and closed, curving mouth.

But he did not come to know William, for the newcomer spoke to few, keeping always apart for all that he was friendly and considerate. He was a butcher, with enough in his pocket to set his stall in the corner of the market, serving the lords' and the merchants' houses alike. He paid his tithe to the church and came to Mass, moving his mouth though no one heard his voice sing. What of that? There were many who were not given to tuneful song, and so William was one of those.

Dominic watched him for a while, strangely drawn to him despite the fact that he did not know him, did not know him at all.

It was not his to claim friendship with the man, for what was Dominic but a church-child? An orphan, claimed by and raised in the monastery by the few ragged, chill-blained monks Manchester could boast. No. Dominic and William spoke only twice in the first year and more that William resided in the village, pleasantries which William no doubt quickly forgot, and which Dominic did not.

Dominic was taught his letters, better than most, and he got the Liturgy by heart of course, and all the Offices. Brother Ian made sure of it, when he wasn't chasing the altar boys with lust in his randy old heart and the stink of wine on his age-raddled breath. Father Peter taught him authority, for he reeked of it, and Dominic watched him closely to learn at least the outward forms, if not the inward steel. Outwardly Father Peter was pompous and tyrannical and obeyed; inwardly he was as strong as gruel, thin as water. He did not bother with Dominic often, except to punish him when Brother Ian demanded it. By the time Dominic was sixteen it had not happened in years; he was quite good at not getting caught.

One monk, Dominic loved. Brother Andrew was a healer, and he taught Dominic what he could of herblore and anatomy. He listened to the old wives and read the texts of the heathen Moors on anatomy and pharmacology and surgery. In his heart, Brother Andrew was a pagan himself, in love with his garden and with God's creation, but not with God Himself.

Dominic was meant to replace Brother Andrew.

He was meant for a life in the church, as a healer and brother, subordinate to Father Peter or someone like him, a life of petty politics and ready stupidity. He resisted taking Orders, saying always that God had not spoken. Because their small abbey was reigned by inertia even more than by God or King, and also because Dominic was an orphan, his dowry money long since spent and gone, Father Peter let the matter lie. "The day shall come, Dominic," he warned the boy, but so far that was all.

Dominic had no intention of taking Orders.

Sometimes Brother Andrew looked at him and sighed, for he knew the rebellion that blossomed in his young protégé's breast. He knew, too, that Dominic was not meant for life in this backwater village, with nothing more to do than recite the Mass and get children on the village doxies. Dominic was a falcon, created by the Lord for the purpose of flight, and to deny it would be to destroy him. And so the old monk taught him healing and curiosity, and told him tales of the great men of medicine in London and beyond, who had knowledge that put his own to shame, to shame. And Dominic listened, and did not reply. But the seed was planted, and Brother Andrew reasoned to himself that he was gifting the world a healer, though he denied Manchester a brother; the Lord would work out the details.


	2. Chapter 2

  
_Altissimus creavit de terra medicinam et vir prudens non abhorrebit illi._  
The most High hath created medicines out of the earth, and a wise man will not abhor them.  
Ecc. 38:4

In 1348, in the early spring, William Boyd was crippled.

A cleaver slipped. It was as simple and deadly as that. The metal blade gouged into William's wrist, a savage slice that nicked the great vein by a hairsbreadth, curving around and severing tendon and flesh in a great slash from his palm to the base of his thumb.

William's sister and brother-in-law staunched the bleeding as best they could and carried him to the church, and Andrew laid him upon a cot in the infirmary to tend him. Dominic fetched the wine and herbs, laid out the instruments, and then sat on the other side of the cot, across from Andrew.

William was half-dazed already from loss of blood and pain; his face was pale and clammy, eyes open wide and yet blank. Dominic took his uninjured hand and the eyes flickered to him, fastened on his. William drew in a hissing breath as Brother Andrew sluiced his other arm and hand with water; when the blood was mostly gone he dripped honey over the gash. William's body was still, but rigid.

"T'will be all right," Dominic said, leaning over. He could see how green the other man's eyes were, even in the dim light of the narrow room. "Brother Andrew will sew it up like a sleeve."

"I will that," muttered the monk. "Sit him up a bit, my child." Dominic shifted onto the cot--it broke the eye contact between William and he, and he felt an odd tug in his belly--and lifted the patient to lean against his chest. Andrew put a cup to William's mouth, and the butcher swallowed.

"Tastes nasty," he commented, and if his face and eyes were strained, his voice was not, was strangely at ease. Dominic moved over, laid him back down and took his hand again.

"Should taste nasty. That's how we know we've done right, eh, Dominic?" Andrew winked at the boy. "Now." The pale blue eyes caught William's. "You must say the Confiteor, slow. Dominic will say it with you. If you begin to feel odd that is good, that is right. Say it slow," he repeated.

William nodded. His eyes flicked to the apprentice's again, and Dominic began, the Scot's voice joining with his on the second word.

_Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, beatae Mariae semper Virgini, beato Michaeli Archangelo, beato Joanni Baptistae, sanctis Apostolis Petro et Paulo, omnibus Sanctis, et tibi Pater: quia peccavi nimis cogitatione verbo, et opere: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa..._

William's hand twitched in Dominic's but he held it tightly, keeping William still and touching his own chest with his free hand in the three ritual blows. William nodded at him and did not stop speaking, his lilt lost in the Latin, voice blending with that of the healer apprentice:

_...ideo precor beatam Mariam semper Virginem, beatum Michaelem Archangelum, beatum Joannem Baptistam, sanctos Apostolos Petrum et Paulum, omnes Sanctos, et te Pater, orare pro me ad Dominum Deum Nostrum._

Near the end William's voice slurred away from Dominic's and his green eyes glazed over; his blinking slowed as his breathing did, until his lids fell at last.

" _Misereatur tui omnipotens Deus, et dimissis peccatis tuis, perducat te ad vitam aeternam._ " Andrew spoke the words as he began to sew the edges of the wound together, and Dominic did not let go of William's hand as he responded for him: "Amen."

~*~*~*~

William remained on the cot. Dominic was put to sitting with him; the butcher's sister could not be there all the time, for her two children, a girl and boy still at breast, were not of an age when stillness was easy for them. So she brought him food and sat by him for a short while, uneasy. Ashamed? Or frightened? Of what? Dominic wondered. Then she left and Dominic sat by him again. William took no fever at first; the gash seemed to be healing well. He did not try to move the bandaged hand, for Andrew said it must be kept still, and so must he. Long before the third day was through he was fretting, anxious to move.

So Dominic sat with him, and tried to distract him.

"How did you come to Manchester?"

"Why surely you must know that, lad." William was sitting up in bed, and his eyes did not settle upon Dominic. They roamed the dark room rather, seeking always, it seemed to Dominic, the chinks where light and air crept in. "T'was my brother Clement's aunt who lived here, Mistress Eufemia, and she sent word that she was ill and needed help to keep up her lands." His voice rolled on, hypnotic, and Dominic relaxed bonelessly into his chair. "So we came, for things were not so fair in Glasgow that we'd aught to stay for. What with one thing and t'other we needed to be moving on," unaccountably, William flushed, and Dominic saw it despite the dim light, for when skin that fair coloured there was naught to hide it. The green eyes flickered, and William plucked restlessly at his coverlet. "So. Here like a gift of God, and doubtless it was so, came the letter from Mistress Eufemia, and here like a gift to her we came. A gift she used, tha' she did well." His eye settled on Dominic's for a moment, a humorous gleam there. Dominic could not hide a grin, for Eufemia Botte had been a grasping, avaricious old woman.

"When she died this winter the whole town came to see her laid to rest," he pointed out blandly.

"Aye, and to make sure she was dead," William retorted with a sly smile, and Dominic gaped and laughed.

"And do you like it here?" he asked William. He felt an urge to hold the man's hand again, as he had two days ago; it was not the first time he'd felt such an urge. He'd other thoughts, as well, which he supposed were sent by the Devil, but Dominic wasn't all that good about remembering that. And besides, he'd begun to wonder what exactly made them so sinful, these thoughts about William he'd had lately. He wasn't stupid enough to confess them to Father Peter, but he might speak with Brother Andrew about them. Or not. William was talking again, and Dominic had missed a bit of it, wool-gathering shamefully.

"So, aye, I like it well enough." William seemed to be concluding. He looked at Dominic again. "And what think you of your city of birth, young Dominic?"

"I think little of it," Dominic replied without thinking. "I mean--" he stammered, flustered by the cool eye of the older man upon him. "I know naught else, so how should I know what to think of Manchester?"

"A fine true answer." William examined him, mouth curved in that secret smile which Dominic craved--which he would, if the truth be known, do anything to call forth. "There are not many who recognize that you cannae know one thing without you know another--black without white, happiness without sadness, hope without despair."

 _Purity without sin_ \--the unspoken words seemed to hang in the air, and Dominic swallowed, wondering if only he could hear them. "I don't want to stay here," he blurted out suddenly, and bit his lip, hard. "Oh, shite," he muttered, and pulled his feet up onto his seat, laying his head upon his knees. God. Eighteen years old, all elbows and ankles and always a stiff cock under his robe, and now this--humiliation, stupidity.

He startled when he felt William's hand upon his head. "Och, calm yourself," the Scot said. "Who am I that you should worry about telling me such?" Dominic looked up hesitantly, saw only kindness in William's face. "I've felt my feet wanted to move at times, but..." The older man shrugged. "I have family here, and a trade. Or..." He looked at his bandaged left hand and his face darkened. "I did hae a trade."

"It's really too early to say what will happen to that hand," Dominic said, his own fear forgotten in the face of that quiet frustration.

"I willnae be able to do what I did, lad," said William sadly, looking still at the hand. "I cannae move my thumb at all, nor these fingers, nor feel aught in them..." He touched his first two fingers. "Clement will take me into his trade, I've little doubt." He did not sound pleased by this; he sounded repelled, almost. He leaned his head back against the wall, fine, close-cropped sandy hair against the smoke-stained wood, his eyes closed.

"What would you do if you could?"

"I dunnae know." William did not open his eyes, and he went so long without speaking that Dominic thought he might have fallen asleep. "If I cannae go back to my trade... I like this place. Perhaps the Father could find room for me here, as a lay brother."

Dominic nodded, though the Scotsman never opened his eyes to see. Dominic was both attracted and repelled by the idea of William here in the church, day after day.

Attracted because he was attracted to him. Carnally, whether he would or no, and also attracted to the quick, humorous mind behind those green eyes, to the spark of wit he saw sometimes, when the pain didn't dull it. Repelled because William did not belong here--even after only three days he knew that the Scot would wilt within the closed confines of this ramshackle society.

William was meant for better things than these rickety old men and this stale, stinking air. William, like Dominic himself, belonged to the sky, and to green earth and tall trees. His mind was one of questions and curiosity, and the thought of that bright, inquisitive gaze dimmed and dammed by these old men... Dominic shivered. He could barely endure it himself. Would not be able to, much longer.

No. William did not belong in the church.

~*~*~*~

Translations of the Latin

I confess to Almighty God, to Blessed Mary ever Virgin, to Blessed Michael the Archangel, to Blessed John the Baptist, to the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, to all the angels and saints, and to you my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, deed. Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault...

...and I ask Blessed Mary ever Virgin, Blessed Michael the Archangel, Blessed John the Baptist, the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, all the Angels and Saints, and you my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God. (from the Ordinary of the Mass)

May Almighty God have mercy on you, forgive you your sins, and bring you to everlasting life. (from the Ordinary of the Mass)


	3. Chapter 3

  
_Die noctuque aestu urebar et gelu fugiebat somnus ab oculis meis._  
Day and night was I parched with heat, and with frost, and sleep departed from my eyes.  
Gen. 31:40

It was the next day that William's brow grew warm. The fever came swift and hard, and within an hour of Brother Andrew's notice of it, William was shivering, caught up. He was lucid when they moved him from the infirmary. A man had sliced through his own ankle with a scythe, clearing his field for planting, and Brother Andrew wanted space in the small healing room.

"I shall put William into your room, Dominic," Andrew said, and Brother Ian, complaining all the while, placed an extra cot and chamber pot in Dominic's chamber. William walked there with his arm looped over Dominic's bony shoulder. The sunlight made him squint and threw the fair beard on his jaw into sharp relief. He had been clean-shaven when he first came in, but declined Brother Andrew's offer to have Dominic barber him; "The lad has done enough for me," he said, and although the stubble was still sparse, he looked well enough with it--not at all ruffianly.

"You are stronger than you look," William said to Dominic, leaning hard on him as they crossed the close. He looked around and then up. "I wish I could stay where I could see the sky."

"I am strong because I work in the garden and fields with Brother Andrew," Dominic replied, "and there is a window in my room. You can have my bed to see out of it." William's body was strong and hot against his; his arms and shoulders were muscular, no doubt from his work with cleaver and knife, and the heat came from his fever. Still, it was a small torment to Dominic.

The window was the reason Dominic suffered the room, which was inconvenient and cramped; with two cots between its high rough walls it was nearly unnavigable, a mere slip of space left between the two beds. Dominic settled William on his cot. A moment later Brother Andrew came in, arms and hands full. "Fresh water, honey, comfrey, willowbark powder, witch hazel," he said as he placed the items upon the empty cot. "You--" he turned his gaze upon William, who had already lain back upon the mattress, mouth shut in a thin line as he tried to control his trembling-- "rest. The fever is good, the Lord's way of burning the sickness from you." Andrew looked at Dominic. "You will stay with him. You know what to do--do it."

Dominic nodded, and as Andrew left he settled the Scotsman comfortably on the bed, removing the soft shoes he'd donned to cross the yard, pulling the covers up to his chin. "You will probably be bored in three moments," he said as he turned to organize the herbs, moving them to the windowsill. "No company but me yet again, until Brother Andrew tends to Geoffrey Farmer."

"I have not been bored with you yet," William said. His voice was courteous, despite the clenched jaw; Dominic remembered his relaxed, sweet tone even as Brother Andrew had tended to his wound three days ago, and wondered about it.

"You are kind," was his only reply.

William's fever rose as the hours passed. Dominic helped him to the chamber pot only once; after that it seemed that the heat within his body burned him up, drying him from the inside out. Dominic gave him water constantly, often with powdered willowbark stirred into it--it gave it a bitter, harsh taste, but Andrew and Dominic both knew its value in preventing fever convulsions. The comfrey and witch's hazel were bound into a honey poultice beneath the bandage, when Dominic changed the dressing upon the wound. It did not look good; it was red and puffy, the thread of the sutures stretched tight by the swollen skin. A thin line of red had crept from William's wrist up the inside of his forearm, and when Dominic traced it, barely running his finger along the skin to feel the heat there and judge it, William made a short, hoarse noise before he could stop himself.

"I'm sorry," Dominic said, and laid the older man's arm gently down. "I wanted to try and feel whether the swelling had moved up your arm as the redness did."

"You must not apologize," William said. The sky outside was darkening, and his green eyes stayed fixed upon the deep blue visible through the window. "You are a gentle healer. You should be a physician."

Dominic moved back upon his cot, leaning against the wall, his knees drawn up under his robes, arms about them. "I wish to be," he said softly.

"Do you?" Now William turned his attention to Dominic. "And how shall you achieve this? Shall you leave this city?"

Something... Dominic trusted the man. "I shall," he replied simply.

"It is good that Father Peter will allow it," William said, but his eyes did not leave Dominic's; even fever-bright, they saw truth clearly.

"He will not." Dominic looked out a the sky in his turn. He could see the first stars appearing, and the chamber felt safe and enclosed. "Nevertheless, I shall leave. In the autumn, I think. I will travel to London and seek education; if that does not avail, I shall travel further. As far as need be--to France or Italy, perhaps." His eyes came back to William's, angular face sharp and set, crooked jaw hard. "I will even go to Spain, to learn from the Moors, if I must. 'Tis said they have wondrous knowledge of the human body and of herbalry and pharmacopoeia." He could not be still--he unfolded his legs and scooted to the edge of the bed again, feet on the floor, one knee jouncing in a quick rhythm.

"Do you not fear to fall into the Devil's snare?" William asked curiously. He shivered, and tugged weakly at the blanket.

Dominic came to pull it higher on him, kneeling on the floor between the beds, his face near to William's but eyes firmly upon the coverlet. "I do not fear the Devil," he said. "I do not know if the Devil exists."

"Heresy," William said mildly, his voice again at odds with his tense expression, his sweating forehead.

"Yes." Dominic met his eyes and smiled humorlessly, looking much older than his seventeen years. "You said before that one must see black to know white. I have not ever seen God, and so I do not know the Devil." He sat back on his heels, staring at William.

William did not reply, but looked at him for a long time, trembling with ague, his hands plucking, plucking at the coverlet. Finally he nodded, and closed his eyes. "Sleepy," he said.

"Sleep is the best thing for you--a better healer than any who has yet lived," Dominic said matter-of-factly. "Here." He moved about, lighting a candle, pouring water into the leather tankard. Then he knelt again and held William's head up so he could drink, smiling as the patient made a face at the bitterness of the brew. "Now sleep. I shall not leave, and if you need something in the night, you have only to ask."

~*~*~*~

William's fever rose and rose. By the next morning he was almost silent, and when he did speak his words were disjointed, barely fastened to the moment. He thanked Dominic when the younger man tended to his body's needs, and again when Dominic took to running a cloth bathed in water and witch hazel over his forehead and neck; otherwise he was quiet, but for the shudders of his body's burning and his hands, which still moved nervously, even the uninjured fingers on his wounded hand twitching slightly.

Brother Andrew came in several times. "How does he?" he asked each time, and Dominic responded: "Well," or "He is hot," or "It does go on."

When alone with William, Dominic knitted--a skill all monks learned--or he read aloud from one of Brother Andrew's medical texts in Latin, occasionally translating into English for the benefit of his silent audience. When this palled (and really Dominic did not want to read about the black humours in wounds, not with William lying beside him, breathing harsh and quick), he changed to the Bible; it was comforting, though he had begun to question its primacy many years before.

"... _Et erit tamquam lignum transplantatum iuxta rivulos aquarum quod fructum suum dabit in tempore suo et folium eius non defluet et omne quod fecerit prosperabitur_..." Dominic read, and he stretched out one hand to touch William's forehead. So hot. He left his hand there. " _Ego dormivi et soporatus sum evigilavi quia Dominus sustentavit me._ I have slept and... rested, and I have risen, for the Lord has sustained me." He stroked William's forehead gently before withdrawing his hand.

When darkness fell Brother Andrew came once more. "How does he?"

"The fever is very high, Brother," said Dominic. "I think it will break tonight, or else he may be past our help." He lifted William's arm, and the man was so far gone in his illness that he did not so much as move when Dominic showed Brother Andrew the angry line of red, reaching all the way to the crook of his elbow now, the skin around the wound shiny and hot. Brother Andrew ran experienced hands down the line, probing gently.

"T'would be best if the sickness could be purged," the monk murmured. He needed say no more; Dominic came and sat on the cot, lowering himself until he lay almost atop William, to keep him still should he wake and react to the pain.

Andrew drew a small knife from his belt and passed it through the candle flame before using it to split two stitches at the lower end of the gash. Next he used the blade to delicately re-open the wound just there; greenish-yellow pus oozed sluggishly out. Andrew began to work, pressing his fingers firmly down William's arm again and again, pushing the poison downward. Pus and blood flowed from the new opening. William never moved. His body was like a furnace beneath Dominic's. The younger man could feel William's rapid breath against his shoulder, but he never turned his head to look at him; he watched Brother Andrew's work instead.

At last it was done; Brother Andrew did not re-stitch the sundered place, but bound it tightly, the comfrey and feverfew poultice he had brought packed into it and into William's hand. Dominic sat up, sweaty from contact with the fevered man's body. "Now we shall see," said Andrew. He rested one hand upon William's forehead: " _Agnus Dei, qui tolis peccata mundi, misere nobis_."

" _Agnus Dei, qui tolis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem_." William sang the words with his eyes closed, body still lax; his voice was clear and beautiful and quiet, and both Andrew and Dominic looked at him in astonishment.

"Ah well. What a gift he has," said Brother Andrew softly. "Perhaps the Lord shall spare him that he might share it with us--I do not think that I have heard him sing so at Mass."

"Nor I," said Dominic, still looking at William's flushed face. "How is Geoffrey?"

"He will regain the use of the foot again, save illness," said Brother Andrew. "And now I am going to my rest, for he is a foul-tempered patient, may the Lord have mercy upon me for saying it, and has worn me to the bone." He smiled at Dominic. "Call for me at need, but I trust you," the monk said as he left. "Use your wits and your instincts should you need to tend to William."

"Aye," Dominic said, and then he was alone again with the butcher. "More water, I think, and I shall sleep," he said, and held the mug to William's parched lips, trickling the liquid slowly into him, rubbing his throat gently until he swallowed. Trying to ignore how drawn he was to the curving mouth, how soft William's beard felt already beneath his fingers. How tender his eyelids looked, and the two narrow lines of his filtrum like the finest carving beneath his sparse facial hair...

His stomach was tight with something--suppressed desire, he knew--and he sighed and laid William gently back down, moving reluctantly to his own cot. He blew out the candle and lay down; his eyes adjusted soon enough to the darkness, and he could see his patient clearly. William was very still, but for the slight movement of his hands.

Dominic fell asleep.

Sometime in the night William began to speak. Dominic awoke to hear him.

"Tis naught, naught but lies," William murmured, desperation and love in his tone. And a few minutes later: "I will not say 'tis wrong. Why must it be? Ach, rest ye a while..." Dominic sat up, rubbing his hands through his cropped hair, and leaned to touch William's forehead. Hot and dry, dry as tinder, burning. He turned to the windowsill for water and willowbark, stirring the one into the other and feeding them into William's mouth. "Ah. Water..." The man's voice grew easier, less rasping, and Dominic wished he'd thought to ask Brother Andrew for more honey, to soothe his throat. "That's good." When Dominic lay his head back onto the pillow, William turned his cheek into Dominic's palm. "Elijah..." the Scot whispered.

Dominic sat back upon his own cot, huddled in the cool spring night, and listened as William rambled on. He was not here, he was somewhere else, a hot day, summertime Dominic supposed. His voice brought the lazy hum of bees into the room, and his words wound on, disjointed and disconnected, sometimes muttered imprecations, more often half-heard sentences, one side of a two-sided conversation. Dominic wondered who Elijah was. Someone William loved. Had loved, perhaps, before he came to Manchester.

The hours trickled slowly by. William's voice grew louder, more frantic. "I willnae," he said again and again, "the evil is in you, to speak such lies!" And a few moments later: "Malice," he hissed, accusation in his tone. Dominic trickled water into his mouth when he could, laced with feverfew and willowbark both, but to no avail; William grew hotter and hotter, and finally ceased speaking, only gasping, harsh, ragged breaths drawn in. Dominic thought of calling for Andrew, but knew from his own apprenticeship that William was now in the hand of God, or fate, or chance--the fever would break soon, or not at all and William would be lost.

"Cold," William stuttered, and indeed he looked cold, curled onto his side beneath the blankets. For the first time Dominic realized that the older man was actually small, smaller than him by a hair, and he himself small enough "to pass through the eye of a camel," as Brother Ian had once said. William Boyd's sweet mouth and direct gaze had prevented Dominic from noticing it, before. But now, huddled tight to himself and shaking, shaking, it was clear.

"Please," said William, and his eyes were open and nearly lucid, looking at Dominic who leaned over him. "Cold."

Dominic nodded. "I shall help you, William," he said, and he pulled the coverlet up, then turned to drag his own blankets onto the trembling man.

"Cold," said William, his eyes beseeching.

"I know, my friend," said Dominic, feeling helpless. William was hot, hot as fire, but racked with chills; Dominic made a decision. He pulled back the blankets and crawled onto the cot with William, covering them both and wrapping his arms tightly around William. "Shhh. Shhh." He rocked him, feeling his own body grow immediately sweaty, though William's was as dry as the desert, as dry as Dominic imagined the Holy Land to be. William closed his eyes and shuddered and breathed, and clasped his body against Dominic's like a drowning man might. Drowning in fire, Dominic thought. He began to speak, whatever words came into his head, a soothing murmur to calm William's frantic body. " _Et si dormierint duo fovebuntur mutuo unus quomodo calefiet?_ That is right, bonny William. You have the right of it, one cannot be warmed alone."

His voice wound on, latching onto the Scripture that had been beaten into him from his earliest days, and William breathed, breathed on, until finally it seemed that his fever could rise no higher. He went rigid in Dominic's arms for a moment.

In the next moment it broke. William went from dry and hot to wet and warm, perspiration prickling all over his body, soaking his hair and his body, adhering him to Dominic's already-damp robes and to the covers. And still he breathed, and his breathing grew easier and steadier as he cooled. "Ah, William, William, my bonny William, you are a strong one, aren't you? Indeed you are." Dominic felt tears sting his eyes, and knew he should get out of the bed, should bathe William's body and give him clean bed linens... but he did not. He lay close to William, crooning wordlessly to him.

William grew calmer, but did not draw away from Dominic; indeed he curled closer to him, and butted his face against Dominic's neck. His hands stuttered and slid down the novice's back to lie at the small of it, and Dominic was suddenly embarrassed, ashamed, for his body responded to William's hands and he felt himself harden; knew that William, should he lie where he was, would surely feel his arousal.

He tried to move away--high time to change the damp coverlets, blatant invitation to another round of chills--but William pushed against him. Body stretching out suddenly like a cat in the sun, he arched his back and ground his hips against Dominic's.

And-- _o ave Maria gratia plena_ \--William was as hard as Dominic, and the feel of his erection against Dominic's, even through two layers of cloth, so far surpassed anything Dominic had ever experienced that he froze, hands light on William's shoulders, and tried not to climax right then and there, mouth and eyes open to darkness, shock and desire written there for any who might look to see.

William had no such response. He pressed tight to Dominic's body, grinding slowly against him, and then subsided, warm and content. "Elijah..." he sighed, and he was asleep, truly asleep in the gentle slumber that grants rest to the weary.

Dominic lay still for some little time, cradling his patient, and finally regained some control of himself. Hands shaking--William's hands were quiet now--Dominic pulled the covers off him and reversed them, so that the dry blankets were atop the sleeping man. He staggered out of his cell and into the chilly night.

In a corner of the shadowy yard he leaned on one arm against the wall and took himself in his other hand. Three strokes, four, and he came, spilling his seed onto the earth like Onan, breath hard and fast, mouthing the word: William.

He slunk back to his room, flushed with arousal and self-disgust, and lay upon his cot without sleeping, looking at William's sleeping face and quiet body under the blankets. Who was Elijah? And why did Dominic wish, desperately, that such was his own name? When dawn came he was still pondering these things, still watching William as grey light filled the rude, tiny room.

~*~*~*~

Translations of the Latin

And he shall be like a tree which is planted near the running waters, which shall bring forth its fruit in due season. And his leaf shall not fall off: and all whatsoever he shall do shall prosper. (Psalms 1:3)

Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us. (from the Ordinary of the Mass)

Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, grant us peace. (from the Ordinary of the Mass)

And if two lie together, they shall warm one another: how shall one alone be warmed? (Ecc. 4:11)


	4. Chapter 4

  
_Manifesto ergo vobis veritatem et non abscondam a vobis sermonem occultum._  
I discover then the truth unto you, and I will not hide the secret from you.  
Tob. 12:11

William did stay in the church.

When his hand was half-healed he went home, but a fortnight later he closeted himself with Father Peter; when he emerged, he had taken the first steps toward becoming a lay brother.

"I cannae go home," he said to Dominic when the two were alone in the vestry. "Margaret looks at me so sadly, and Clement with pity..." He shook his head. "They've no need for me in the house anymore." There was more, which he did not say.

Since his illness he had spoken almost freely to the lad, though he was still distant with nearly everyone else. Dominic was sure William did not remember his fever dreams, and he never spoke of them to him. Instead they spoke of other things: William's new duties, mostly to do with beekeeping and the choir. Latin, which William understood better than any peasant should; he shrugged it off and did not explain. Medicine--mostly Dominic; and travel--mostly William. Something in William freed Dominic as he had never been free before, even with Brother Andrew; he sometimes felt guilty for monopolizing their discourse, but William told him that he enjoyed his talk. Within two weeks Dominic had confided further and deeper and more truthfully in William than he could have imagined. And William not only listened, he heard. Their friendship was bantering, friendly, and desperately important to Dominic.

William's hand was crippled, but he could perform simple labour; he could tend his bees--the brother who'd kept them had died shortly before William arrived--and he could work in the garden or fields with Andrew and Dominic. He sang in the choir, and the priests and townspeople who came to celebrate the Mass in the abbey church widened their eyes at his voice.

~*~*~*~

"I wish I could do tha'," William said one day as Dominic pored over an anatomy text; his own hands were busy with sand and polishing cloths. They were sitting in the infirmary as the rain fell; Brother Andrew was in the kitchens.

"What?" Dominic looked up. He caught a startled expression in William's eyes before it was hidden with an easy smile.

"Reading, I mean," William said, and Dominic wondered if he'd imagined the look.

"You could learn," he said. "Tisn't really that hard, though people make it out to be so. Brother Ian could teach you."

William's smile widened. "Perhaps I'll stay without, then." He winked at Dominic and looked back down at the silver in his lap.

Dominic laughed. "No, no, he's a good teacher, if rough. He really does love words. All he loves." He tilted his head to look at William. "He's the one who gets Brother Andrew's texts for him. Ian used to be at a great abbey in London, but there was some scandal, and he has been here for this past age. He's too impatient to teach the noble sons. And too quick for them, frankly. He's an awful old sot, but his mind is good."

William smiled. "You have a way of looking at people kindly, Dominic. It's quite nice." He was sincere.

Dominic snorted. "I'm the most cynical man I know," he retorted. "And the most ungodly."

"But still kind," said William. "I dinnae suppose you must be Christian to be kind."

"Sometimes I think you must not be Christian to be kind," said Dominic, a thought he would never have dared voice before William came to live at the church. He laid the book aside and stretched, enjoying the feel of his sinews pulling and bones popping.

"Aye, perhaps so. Though Andrew is kind. And I am kind." William, for all his tolerance of Dominic's blasphemy, was careful not to echo it. Dominic wondered, sometimes, if the Scot's faith was real or pretended. He did not ask, though. It was private, as so many other things were about William.

"You are. And now I shall prove the original posit, being a marginal Christian at best, and make a kind offer: Shall I teach you to read?"

William's face lit at that. "Why yes, Dominic, that would be fine." He smiled so sweetly that Dominic wanted to run away, wanted to throw himself upon William, wanted to kiss him... but he did not; instead he blushed, and smiled back.

~*~*~*~

Spring passed into summer. Brother Ian snorted at Dominic's presumption, but gave him two of his precious books, one in English, even, to help in teaching William to read. It was slow work; William's mind was quick--lightning quick, Dominic knew--but Dominic could not remember learning to read, and had certainly never taught anyone else. There were many stops and starts along the way, but after a while William could puzzle out sentences, slowly, in both English and Latin.

During the first hot days of June the two of them often disappeared on the church's land. They would pick a tree to sit beneath and eat and read. The monks did not complain. Peter never knew they were gone; Ian, who might have complained had he known, never noticed. Andrew loved them both and so long as the gardens were tended and help given him in the infirmary when it was needed, he did not deny them the sunshine and one another's company.

"I don't feel like reading," said Dominic, reclining on his back and looking up through the green branches of an oak tree.

William laid his book aside. "What would you do?"

"You could sing me a song," Dominic suggested, and William laughed.

"I dunnae want to sing, now, Dominic. Listen, the birds are singing. I cannae compete with such as tha'."

"Fine. Talk then." Dominic turned onto his side, pillowing his head on his arm. William sat cross-legged beside him, plucking up long stems of grass.

"And what shall we talk of?"

"What was Glasgow like?"

William's face changed subtly; the mask came down, or what Dominic thought of as a mask--the pleasantly closed expression he used in talking to almost everyone around him. "Large, a large city, you know. Always busy, always noisy. It stank more than Manchester."

"William... why did you leave?" Dominic was getting closer to his real question. He watched the older man's mouth, his green eyes.

"I told you. Eufemia sent word, and things were hard anyway..." William's voice trailed off. "T'was as well. I'd have had to work with my older brother, and him and I like ice and fire, always at odds. We'd as soon start into a quarrel as look at each other."

"William." Dominic did not move, still looked up at him with his body relaxed and quiet, but he let his impatience creep into his voice.

"What is it, my lad?" William looked down at him and Dominic hated the polite interest there. That was not William, not the William he knew and--his mind stammered over the word, but it would out--knew and loved.

Made reckless by the internal admission, Dominic asked: "Who is Elijah?"

Almost William kept his face impassive and curious. Almost. But Dominic was watching like an eagle, and he saw it, saw the flicker. "I dunnae know what..."

"When you were ill," Dominic said. And now he sat up, and moved closer to William. "You said his name. And other things. There were other things. Who was he? Who is he?" The mask slid away and Dominic saw William revealed, saw his face twist. The young man's gut wrenched and he wished he had not said anything, had kept his silence, not brought pain to his friend. "I'm sorry," Dominic said quickly. "It was nothing, I am sure. Fever dreams. I'm sorry."

"Nay." William stared at the ground, rolling grass leaves between the fingers and thumb of his good hand. He sat silently in the shade-dappled sunlight for a time. "You've naught to be sorry for. And... neither have I." He looked at Dominic, and what he saw in the younger man's face seemed to reassure him. "Elijah was a lad whom I loved, for a while." His lilting voice took on the formal cadences of confession; his green eyes dropped again to look at the earth. "He was younger than me, and the younger son of a lord. When I was a young man my father took me to the church, thinking perhaps I would be a priest; that's how I come to know so much Latin. My brother and I..." He sighed. "It would not do for me to have continued to apprentice beside him." After a moment he went on. "The sons of the lords came to be taught at the monastery, and so I met him. Met Elijah." Dominic heard relief in his voice, relief at being able to say the name aloud. "He was a beautiful lad, pretty as a girl, and he and I... we got on well together. Almost as well as you and I do." He glanced at Dominic. "There was nothing... evil in it. Nothing unnatural or sinful or wrong. We just... loved one another."

Dominic moved closer still, until his knee touched William's. "I believe you," he said.

"Thank you," William whispered. He was silent for a while, his head bent down. "Elijah was... he was young." He smiled, as if to himself. "And foolish. He was... he was fearless, and one day, he. He kissed me. Not a brotherly kiss. And I, fool that I was, I kissed him back."

Dominic wanted to say something, wanted to respond, but his body had turned to stone--certain parts more than others--and so he sat still, very still.

William sighed. "We were stupid, the both of us, lambs for the slaughter. Elijah was young and headstrong, and convinced that his pretty face could get him out of any amount of trouble. And so he was not discreet, and one day we were discovered.

"There was a quiet uproar. My family might have been disgraced; Elijah's father was powerful enough to vent his spleen in a hundred petty ways. My sister and brother-in-law were already coming to Manchester--Eufemia truly was old and ill, as you know. And so Malcolm--that is my older brother's name--spoke with Clement, and I came away with them. Malcolm was happy to be rid of me so well, really."

"I am sorry. I should not have asked."

William looked at him and a glint of humour sparked in his face. "Is that so?" He cocked his head at Dominic. "You of all men might ask, you know."

"What--" Dominic stopped and swallowed, saw the unmistakable way that William's eyes slipped to his throat and up again. "What do you mean?"

"I have seen you look at me, Dominic. You look at me in the same way that Elijah did."

Dominic blushed, the hottest, reddest flush he had ever felt upon his face. But he would not flinch away from this. "Do I?" was all he said.

William tilted his head. "Yes. And I... Well. I swore to myself that I would not indulge in such sin again. But you remind me of what I said at the time, and would still say if put to the question. There was no sin."

Dominic held his eye. "You know more than any other person in the world about me. More even than Brother Andrew, for I have not confided in him... He does not know that my faith is weak." The novice smiled, a hard, humourless expression upon his angular face. "But you and I live in this world. And there are many who say that the love of a man for a man is unnatural."

William replied quickly, one eyebrow arched eloquently. "I have heard them--more than you can have," and Dominic had the grace to redden under his sardonic gaze. "But they are wrong. I have never told you an untruth, Dominic." His brows became level, serious, his mouth a firm line. "Looking back, I see that Elijah was lovely, and loving, but not a partner for me. Still, I do not feel that I was wrong to have kissed him--and that is all we ever did. I was like any young man, flirting and playing with the object of his desire, and being teased by one who fancies him. The fact that he was a lad and not a lass... why is that wrong? I have never known. It did not feel wrong. And what I feel for you..."

Dominic opened his mouth; paused and then plunged. "And what you feel for me?"

"Does not feel wrong. It feels as natural as taking breath."

In that moment William kissed Dominic, both of them leaning forward; it was a soft, tentative thing, that kiss. Dominic closed his eyes, feeling William's lips against his own, soft and dry; he opened them and saw William's green eyes looking back into his own, blurred by proximity, enormous and wide open, every barrier fallen.

It was too much; he broke the kiss, breathing quickly, and leaned forward into the circle of William's embrace.

He could feel William's chin on his head, and the strong arms around him. He pressed his forehead into the older man's sternum and laughed lightly, a dizzy sound born of his pounding heart and arousal, swift and pressing beneath his robes. He felt William's answering chuckle before he heard it.

"How did that feel?" William asked.

"Like taking breath... and it is like taking breath, because I do not think I could live without it, now." Dominic huddled further into William's arms, for all that he still sat knee-to-knee with him.

"Ach, Dominic." William's voice was amused and gentle. "You shall have to, one day soon. You mean to leave this place. You are a wanderer at heart."

Dominic sat up, feeling the blood drain from his face. "But now--but I--" He could not go on.

"Now you know I love you; now you love me, too," William said for him. His green eyes were sad and wise. "But you will go."

"You could come with me," Dominic said. He wanted so badly to kiss William again--his body had known all along what that sweet mouth was for--but he held himself back.

William took his hands. "I cannae go. If I flee again I will never stop. You are running to something. I would be running away." He squeezed gently. "And you are young. You must grow into yourself. I will not again make the mistake I made with Elijah, of loving someone too young to know his own heart."

Dominic's eyes prickled with tears of rage and sorrow. "But William. Whyever did you tell me then?"

"Because I do love you. And I think you love me, too, so I must speak--I cannae help myself. And so that you might come back." William touched his cheek. "Come back here when you have learned what you want to learn. Come back and tell me where you have been, and what you have gained. Tell me all those things, and then stay here. Or perhaps then I will go with you." He smiled and shrugged. "I am just a lay brother; no one would miss me. Find your own man, Dominic, and then, if you still want me, come back here."

Dominic leaned forward again, shifting until the Scot cradled him in his arms and rocked him. "I will come back, you know," he said after a long silence. "I can only hold my breath for so long."

"There's no need to begin just now," William said with a smile in his voice.

"You have the truth of it," Dominic replied, and lifted his mouth to William's again.


	5. Chapter 5

  
_Ite cum pace Dominus respicit viam vestram et iter quo pergitis._  
Go in peace: the Lord looketh on your way, and the journey that you go.  
Judges 18:6

Dominic left at the end of September in the year of our Lord 1348, when the leaves on the chestnuts were just beginning to turn to showy red and orange, and the birch trees were touched with gold. William was his only confidante; even Andrew was not to be told of his leaving. Dominic and the Scot plotted the escape, but really it was quite simple.

He left in the night, before Matins stirred the monks from their beds. He had a small bit of money, which William had insisted he take; he had clean robes and also the clothing of a laborer who had died in the abbey a year ago. Rough boots on his feet and a blanket rolled and strapped to his back, he stood at the small side gate with William in the darkness, leaning against him one last time.

"Dominic," came a third voice, interrupting their murmured colloquy, and both men started. Dominic had the gate half-open to flee before he recognized the voice and stopped; he touched William's arm to calm him.

"So you are leaving now, my son," said Andrew, emerging from the shadows.

"I am," Dominic said. "Will you stop me?"

Andrew chuckled low, a cheerful sound. "And undo all my good work? No. No, I will not stop you." He glanced at William in a friendly way, then back at Dominic, his faded blue eyes almost silver in the white wash of moonlight. "I have brought you something, child. A letter." He pressed a thin roll of parchment into Dominic's hand. "Use it to gain entrance into a school. They will take you, with this letter and if you work hard. I've no gelt to give to you, but this will ease your path, I hope."

Dominic turned the letter over in his hands. "Thank you," he said, and clasped Andrew against himself, firm and strong. "I am sorry I did not come to say good-bye," he whispered into the monk's ear.

"Hush there," Andrew replied, his capable hands stroking Dominic's back. "No need for that. You may be back someday, after all. And even if you are not, I have hoped, for so long... Well. You are ready to fly." He broke their embrace and kissed Dominic's forehead. " _Dominus vobiscum."_

_"Et cum spiritu tuo."_

_"Ite, Missa est."_

_"Deo gratias_." Dominic kissed Andrew's mouth once, hard, and the old man smiled and turned away, disappearing into the shadows.

Dominic turned to William. "Well."

"You should go," said William fondly. He reached for the younger man, though, and held him tight against his chest.

"Yes." Dominic agreed, but he pressed his nose into William's neck and nuzzled him, arms tight around his waist. "Mmm."

"Go," whispered William, laughing, and released him. "Or we shall break all our vows and be found here in the courtyard at Prime, naked as babes and asleep from our loving."

"Well, they would certainly help me to leave then," Dominic pointed out, kissing the tender skin below William's chin. "Remind me again what we vowed?"

William chuckled, a warm sound against his ribs. "That we would not lie together yet, not until you come back to me as a man. That we would hold fast to one another, and keep our faith between us."

"Mmm." Dominic tilted his head and ran his tongue along the tendon of William's neck. "It seemed like a wise idea at the time..." He could feel the Scot's hands waver, caressing his back lovingly, before he was pushed gently away to stand on his own feet.

"Go now, Dominic, and learn what others have to teach. And come back someday."

"Two years," Dominic promised him. "Only that, and I shall come back and fetch you, and we will run away together."

"Two years," William echoed, and there was one last kiss, deep and long and seeking. " _Ite, Missa est,_ " he said at last, and heard Dominic's laughing " _Deo gratias_ ," as the slim form of the youth slipped out the gate into the night.

William shivered a little--he was so cold where Dominic had leant against him, and although he trusted that Dominic would return, he feared for him. He knew what harm could come to a trusting soul, and was there ever anyone so trusting as that lad out there? For all his cynicism and lack of faith, Dominic was tender, tender to his very core, and William shivered because he knew that tenderness might be plundered without mercy by the hard world.

"He will be well," said Andrew's voice, and William did not even startle this time.

"How do you know?" He turned, trying to pierce the darkness with his gaze, and Andrew came to meet him.

"He is a survivor, that one." Andrew reached for William's hand and held it, chafing it against the cold. "Come. It wouldn't do to have anyone wondering why we are here. When they look for Dominic they will come to us to ask for him, first. We must be in our beds."

"Yes, I know." William sighed, and glanced once more at the closed door before he followed Brother Andrew within the walls of the monastery.

Nine years would pass before he saw Dominic's face again.

~*~*~*~

Translations of the Latin

May the Lord be with you.  
And also with your spirit.  
Go, you are sent forth.  
Thanks be to God. (from the Ordinary of the Mass) 


	6. Chapter 6

**Interlude & Chapter Six**

In the summer of 1348, an immigrant landed upon England's green shores. Unwanted and deadly, it swept across the country with unparalleled force, decimating the population by one-third to one-half its number. This visitor was bubonic plague, "The Pestilence" or "Great Plague" as it was called; it came to be known as "The Black Death." Few areas were left unscathed; in most villages there were deaths, and some townships were wiped away completely. By 1350 it had spread to Scotland, and a few short months later, Ireland, too, felt the plague's wrath. Even the islands around Britain were not spared--plague spread as far as Iceland.

Every facet of life was upset. The individual toll--the hard, mundane necessity of dealing with the deaths of family members and loved ones--was enormous. The sweeping societal changes that followed in its wake were no less monumental: freedom for the peasantry to move about; the end of cheap, plentiful labour and resultant rise of the middle class; the loss or gain of faith in the Church.

Perhaps this manuscript, found within a monastery in Kilkenny, Ireland, best relates the intensity of the Plague and its effects upon the populace as individuals and as a whole.

_Plague stripped villages, cities, castles and towns of their inhabitants so thoroughly that there was scarcely anyone left alive in them. The pestilence was so contagious that those who touched the dead or the sick were immediately affected themselves and died, so that the penitent and confessor were carried together to the grave. Because of their fear and horror, men could hardly bring themselves to perform the pious and charitable acts of visiting the sick and burying the dead. Many died of boils, abscesses and pustules which erupted on the legs and in the armpits. Others died in frenzy, brought on by an affliction of the head, or vomiting blood. This amazing year was outside the usual order of things, exceptional in quite contradictory ways--abundantly fertile and yet at the same time sickly and deadly... It was very rare for just one person to die in a house, usually, husband, wife, children and servants all went the same way, the way of death._

_And I, Brother John Clyn of the Friars Minor in Kilkenny, have written in this book the notable events which befell in my time, which I saw myself or have learned from men worthy of belief. So that notable deeds should not perish with time, and be lost from the memory of future generations, I, seeing these many ills, and that the whole world encompassed by evil, waiting among the dead for death to come, have committed to writing what I have truly heard and examined; and so that the writing does not perish with the writer, or the work fail with the workman, I leave parchment for continuing the work, in case anyone should still be alive in the future and any son of Adam can escape this pestilence and continue the work thus begun._

Here the narrative breaks off and is followed by a note in another hand:

_Here, it seems, the author died._

The market town of Manchester was not hit particularly hard by the Black Plague: Only one-half of the city's inhabitants died.

~*~*~*~

_Utres vini novos implevimus nunc rupti sunt et soluti vestes et calciamenta quibus induimus_  
et quae habemus in pedibus ob longitudinem largioris viae trita sunt et paene consumpta.  
These bottles of wine when we filled them were new, now they are rent and burst. These garments we have on,  
and the shoes we have on our feet, by reason of the very long journey, are worn out, and almost consumed.  
Joshua 9:13

Dominic was not certain why he came back.

Nine years. In nine years he had traveled the isle of his birth, and taken ship to Europe's mainland and traveled it, too, from France and Germany south to Italy. He would be welcome as a physician at Oxford, having studied in Salerno for six years. Montpelier would take him in, and he had picked up enough French during his journeying to get by. For that matter his teachers at Salerno would not turn him away. He had not been to Spain, but he thought of it often. Or Constantinople. Somewhere warm.

Dominic was cold all the time, these days. Part of it was that he could not seem to keep flesh upon his bones. He had always been thin, perhaps always would be. It was good, in a way--he never looked prosperous enough to rob, skinny and dressed in plain clothes, with just his small pack of medicines and a bedroll. Part of it was softness--the years at Salerno had accustomed him to mild winters and scalding summers. Part of it... part of it was this place. This city.

Manchester had changed little. Dominic did not know what he had expected. A town of ghosts? Gibbering skeletons walking the streets? Perhaps.

He knew what the Black Death could do. Knew it with his every sense, the sight of its boils and the stench of them, the feel of putrescent flesh beneath his fingers, the sounds of illness and of grief, the taste of ash in his mouth. It was an ugly disease, as ugly as any other. It had never touched him.

Dominic came unscathed through each encounter with it, his body stubbornly healthy. It surprised his teachers; one told him that God must have protected him so that he could minister to those who went unprotected. Dominic had gaped at him, emitting a pained, embarrassing, strangled sound which bore little resemblance to laughter.

That had been five years ago. It was seven years ago and more that a traveler to Salerno had told him of the havoc wreaked upon the abbey and church of Manchester. All the town was emptied, the man had said, from Meal Gate to St. Mary's. The nobles had escaped, fleeing into the countryside; but none were left alive in the abbey proper or the church, either. The people had turned first to the lay brothers and then to the deacons to be shriven as the illness swept through the town.

"All--?" Dominic had asked.

"Not a soul left alive to save the dying or their souls. There was one brother worked hard from the first, healing, Brother Andrew, I remember... Should have him sainted. He died in the winter, right in the thick of it."

"Were you there?"

"Aye, and sorry for it. Why, what's the matter, lad, did you know him now?"

"I did." Dominic had gasped, bent over, trying to get air into his lungs. The traveler supported him, sorry to have brought such sadness, not knowing the half of it, for if Andrew was dead, and the other brothers, and not one left alive... William. Gone.

Dominic had been cold ever since.

He had sent letters to the city, three of them by various travelers who promised at least to send them on; no answer had ever come, and Dominic could not convince himself to go there, not for a long, long time. Only last year had he made the decision, to at least see the place once more. Perhaps he could lay his demons to rest if he could just... see. The city, the monastery. The place where William had died, alone. Without him.

Now he stood at the southern wall of the city, at Deans Gate. He could see the spire of the parish church, and the low roof of the abbey. And people--plenty of people, for he had come on a market day. Spring in Manchester, and a rainier, chillier, uglier day would be hard to find. Dominic pulled his cloak about him more tightly; he let the flow of people carry him toward the square.

He did not know the stalls well--had not been allowed to the market often at all. He looked a little for a mercer's stall, but saw nothing. He wondered if William's sister had survived. He would never recognize her; his faint memories of her told him she did not resemble William, except in small, neat hands. No one here would recognize Dominic, either. Nine years made it a certainty. And he did not look the same--he moved differently, and of course there was the beard.

Dominic shivered and ducked beneath an awning, looking at dried herbs he could afford and soaps he could not.

"Have you any comfrey?" he asked the merchant, simply to have something to say, and the man--scarred, yes, here was a survivor of the plague--nodded and showed him the dried leaves. They were poor quality, but Dominic bought a bit anyhow. It would do for tea, perhaps. "Does the abbey house travelers?" Dominic asked.

"Nay, not t'abbey. No one there since the Pestilence." The man did not look up, did not see the spasm that pinched Dominic's face for a moment. "But there's the deacon at the church--you could ask him. He mostly does for folks. We had a priest for a while, but he died this winter." He handed Dominic the twist of herbs and turned back to his work. Dominic stood holding the little bundle. He thought about eating--when had that happened last? A day ago, something like that.

Dominic stepped back into the rain. It was getting heavier, and the people were beginning to thin. He passed a tavern and marked it in his mind--a place to sleep in case the deacon would not let him in, or had no room. Sleep would be good. He had been walking since well before dawn, had found that sleep receded into distance just as the horizon did, growing hazier with every mile nearer to the city. Even now, bone-tired, exhausted, he was not actually sleepy.

He did not want to go to the church yet. He did not want to go anywhere, really, but his feet were moving, and after a while he found himself outside the small gate to the monastery. The gate he had left by.

Dominic sighed and pushed it open. The yard inside was empty, dark mud and trees just budding, still bare but for the tight red swells at the tip of each twig. He crossed the close and hesitantly opened the door to the church. The interior was stripped, of course. Anything of use had long since been taken and put to it. Bare dirt floor and the low wooden roof above his head, and owls nesting here. Bats, too, probably. Dom went and sat on the altar step; the poorly carved cross still hung on the back wall, and he felt an odd sense of companionship with it. Lonely. It must be lonely here in this echoing room. He pulled his knees up and sat with his arms around them. He wished he had wine, or ale. He wished he could get drunk and let consciousness fade here, on this packed earthen floor, and wake up and just leave, go. Leave this city behind him.

Andrew--God, how he had loved Brother Andrew. But the monk had been old, and Dominic had known they might never see one another again. Had accepted it, really. The other monks, the two priests he had known from the church... It had staggered him to learn that they were all of them gone at once, in a single season. It seemed like punishment, almost. Punishment for running away. But he had never believed that. Because he was alive, and they were dead, and if that was the best punishment God could invent, Dominic was not impressed.

But of course that was not the worst punishment God could invent, was it?

William.

Dominic spoke his name aloud into the quiet, into the dim, dank air: "William Boyd."

That William had gone, that was punishment indeed. But still, Dominic did not really believe in it. Did not believe God punished anyone. Even were Dominic a good Christian--which he had long ceased to be, attending Mass as a palliative, enjoying the familiar words and forms, but not really believing in them--even were Dominic a good Christian, Christ was the new word of God, wasn't he? And this plague, this death, this scourge that had stripped the world of so many souls in so short a time--it was Old Testament. God, seeing every sparrow fall, would surely grieve the sheer magnitude of the wreckage wrought here. If Dominic believed in a God at all, his God was sorrowful.

 _As am I._ He did not speak those words aloud, but as he sat with his head bent onto his knees he did speak.

_Beati qui lugent quoniam ipsi consolabuntur._

The words were muffled by his clothing, and his knees, and his beard, but Dominic did not care. After he had spoken he sat where he was for a long time, rocking slightly, tucked into himself, waiting to be able to take breath again.

~*~*~*~

Translation of the Latin

Blessed are they that grieve, for they shall be comforted. (from the Sermon on the Mount) 


	7. Chapter 7

  
_Quare factus est dolor meus perpetuus et plaga mea desperabilis rennuit curari facta est mihi quasi mendacium aquarum infidelium._  
Why is my sorrow become perpetual, and my wound desperate so as to refuse to be healed? it is become to me as the falsehood of deceitful waters that cannot be trusted.  
Jer. 15:1

Eventually the light in the room faded altogether, and Dominic unbent himself. His eyes were red and his back hurt as he stood up. The church was right next door; he supposed that if the deacon turned him away he could always come back here and sleep on the floor. The idea of the tavern repelled him now. He just wanted to leave. There was no hope of finding a grave for either William or Andrew; Dominic knew too well the mass graves, the tangle of discarded corpses that had been the legacy of so many towns struck hard by the plague. Here, where there had been no churchmen left to record the deaths, there was simply no chance of finding out where one or two individuals had been laid to rest.

There was a dim radiance visible in the church--the altar light, no doubt. A small house was attached to the eastern wall of the building, and Dominic could see firelight wavering around the cracks in the shabby door. He knocked upon it.

Nothing could really have prepared him for what he saw next. The door swung open and a man faced him. Dominic could not see his face with the fire behind him. He did not need to see his face. The rounded shoulders--the narrow frame of his body--the soft hair, haloed golden by the firelight...

"William," he said, like a curse, like a benediction, and he toppled forward without another thought, without volition, seeing the earthen floor rush up to meet him, hearing, like the faintest echo, the deacon's surprised exclamation before darkness crashed down on him like something tangible: heavy and hard and irresistible.

~*~*~*~

When Dominic woke up he was looking right at William. He looked... older. Well, he would, wouldn't he? His hair had thinned, drawn back from his high, pale forehead; there were delicate lines around his mouth and nose, fanning out from his eyes. His body was thinner, shoulders narrower although the slope of them was the same. His mouth was the same. His eyes...

His eye were downcast, focused upon the cloth he turned slowly in his hands. Dominic made some small noise, clearing his throat, and William looked up, sharp and quick as a bird. "You're awake," he said, and his voice was the same, the same light, lilting tenor it had been, the Scots audible even in two words.

"William," said Dominic, lying in the deacon's bed. "Do you know me?"

"Yes." William's voice was calm, and Dominic remembered, with a twist of pain, that William's voice always lay at odds with his expression, was always serene. His expression now was blank--empty. And his eyes had slid away from Dominic's, back to his small, neat hands, twisting and twisting the scrap of rag.

"We never." The two words slipped out before he knew he was going to say them.

"We never what, Dominic?"

His name, spoken in that voice. Dominic shuddered where he lay, felt his nose sting as tears rose to his eyes. He didn't know why he finished the sentence, but he did: "We never lay together, you and I."

William blushed, a deep, hot, excruciatingly red stain that made the small hairs on the back of Dominic's neck stand up in sympathy. The older man did not look up, though, and he did not smile. "No," he said, and seemed content to leave it at that.

"I was just thinking about your voice," Dominic fumbled. He willed himself not to sob, and let the words continue, though he knew they were utter lunacy. "You always sounded--always sound--so tranquil."

William made a small noise. It might have been a laugh.

"I always wondered... I wondered how you would sound if we--when we--"

"Please stop."

Dominic sat up, shifted his feet to the floor. He could've sat up as soon as he opened his eyes, but it had been easier, in a way. Easier to lie down than to face the fear in William's face, the green eyes that were almost-but-not-quite William's. "I thought you were dead," he said.

William didn't seem to have heard him, though his words came like a strangely distorted echo: "I thought for so long that you were dead... When I saw you on the doorstep I dinnae recognize you. You said my name, and then fell down--I dinnae have time to catch you, even." He sounded almost embarrassed. "I picked you up. You doan weigh what a child weighs... 't'wasn't until I laid you down and looked at you, really looked. That I..." William's eyes skittered to Dominic's face, flitted away.

"William." Dominic leaned forward, tried to capture the other man's gaze again.

"No." So sweet, that voice.

"William, I was in Italy, in Salerno. There was a traveler--I don't know, some petty noble, ragtag cousin to a rich house--" Dominic waved his hand irritably. "He told me--he said. He said everyone had died, everyone in the abbey, everyone in the church. He said there were none left to shrive the dying, that Brother Andrew was dead, that the people had no one, the brothers died, the lay brothers died--" the tears were coming now, it was agony but Dominic had to go on-- "there was a deacon who gave the rites when he could. And you--you were dead, you were _dead_ and I didn't know what to _do_ , William, I didn't--"

"Stop, please stop." William's voice cutting him through, his voice and the fact that he had risen, moved away from Dominic.

"I didn't know, William. I am sorry, I am so sorry, please forgive me, oh Lord God, please." Dominic could not stand, his body was locked in a rictus of pain, curled around his own stomach, rocking himself. He looked a fool, he knew, tears and snot and his own voice anything but calm... It didn't matter. "Please, oh God _please_ , please William..."

"So do you believe in God now, Dominic?"

It sliced through the younger man like a knife, like a surgical blade, that question. He shook his head, not in negation. "I don't know. I don't know anymore."

"I do."

Dominic did not look up at him, he rubbed his sleeve across his face, feeling the rough linen scrape; he nodded. "I know. I know you always did."

"Are you a physician now? Is that what you spent the years learning?"

Dominic nodded again and looked up; through the haze of his own tears he could see William standing by the fire, gazing at the door, or at some point on the wall, but not at him. "Yes."

"You have seen what the Black Death does, then." It was not a question.

"Yes." Dominic whispered the word.

"Right after you went we began hearing rumors of a sickness, a disease that was spreading through the south. A few months later, in March, the first of the refugees came to us--nobles, fleeing London. The plague came to them before Christmas. They said--they said there was no one left to ring the bells in the villages. They were all dead." William's face contorted for a moment, but his voice went on, relentless, limpid.

"After you left, Father Peter began telling me I must take Orders, I must commit to the abbey." He smiled humourlessly, the expression painful to watch on his delicate mouth. "It shook him, when you went." Dominic smiled, too, a little. Yes. He could imagine that. "But I wouldn't. I never would, because... you were coming back. I could not go back to live with Margaret, so I became the deacon here." Dominic began to shake his head, back and forth, back and forth; William was completely still. The rag hung limply from one hand. "You were coming back. I knew you would. And then... then you weren't." He looked at Dominic finally. "You weren't."

"William..."

"Even when they told me, told me about London, I thought _no, not Dominic. Not that lad, he burns too bright--nothing so small as a plague could claim him._ And then the next winter the plague was here, and I saw it. I saw what it did and I knew--I knew you were dead. You had gone out to meet it, and I knew it had taken you, just as it took everything, everyone else. That is what I learned, Dominic. I learned that my belief in God was true, but that it did not help anything. It did not change anything."

"But I am _not_ ," Dominic said passionately, and nine years did not matter, they fell away like gauze, like the most delicate ice crystals at the touch of a finger, like eiderdown blown on the breeze. He stood up and crossed to William. "I am not dead, and you are not either. We are alive, and I have come back."

William looked at him sadly and Dominic nearly recoiled at the fear and rage in his eyes. "No, you dunnae understand. I am dead--I died then, seven years ago or more. I died."

"I don't understand you, William." Dominic feared suddenly that it was all a dream, madness, that he spoke with a ghost. Before he could stop himself he reached out, grasped William's arms. They were solid, warm--real.

William gasped and broke away, backed away until he stood against the wall beside the fireplace. "I made my choice, Dominic. I could not go into the abbey, for there was no one there to receive me. I stayed on, here at the church, and I swore that I would remain here, that I would--serve. I would serve." His eyes were strange, deep and hard and fearful. "I cannae break that vow. I willnae."

"William!" The name came croaking from Dominic's throat and he sobbed once, a harsh, unbeautiful sound. "What do you say to me?"

"I say that I am nothing, I am a ghost. Leave me here, go and tend to the ill, tend to the wounded."

Dominic felt dazed, bruised, beaten. "I do not understand," he whispered. "What would you have me do?"

William closed his eyes and his face collapsed for just a moment, until he regained control. Dominic could hear his breathing, quick and shallow. "Go. Leave me here, let my ghost lie in peace. Go back to Italy... go."

"I will not." Dominic stood where he was. He sniffled, and almost smiled at the childishness of the sound. "I will stay fast, where I am. I will not leave, unless I have you at my side."

"Please," William said. He opened his eyes.

Dominic regarded him for a long moment. "No." He set his jaw and stared at William until the older man dropped his gaze. "Where shall I sleep?"

William's shoulders slumped. "Where you will," he said tonelessly. "There is only the floor, and my bed." His face colored as he realized what he had said, and Dominic smiled a bit, but shook his head.

"The floor will do admirably. I am quite accustomed to it."

He settled himself before the fire, rolled into his blanket. He could hear William behind him; the ropes of the bed creaked as the Scot settled his weight onto it, and mere moments later Dominic was gone, hunger forgotten as exhaustion swamped his body and soul and he sank miles deep into darkness.


	8. Chapter 8

  
_Si autem quod non videmus speramus per patientiam expectamus._  
But if we hope for that which we see not, we wait for it with patience.  
Rom. 8:25

When he woke Dominic knew exactly where he was. His back was to the dead fire, and grey light filled the room. On the bed he could see William's sleeping form. A wave of sadness and desire washed over him, and he squeezed his eyes closed. William was hurt, damaged. The pestilence had left his body but claimed his spirit. The pain in his face, the shadow in his eyes... Dominic could have wept for pity and vexation.

He did not weep; he sat up, rubbing his hands through his hair and shivering in the chill air. William continued to sleep as Dominic built the fire up again; there was a pot to be swung over the flames, and he found something of pottage in the larder.

By the time William stirred, Dominic was sitting at the small table, a steaming bowl before him. He'd found William's leather cup and poured ale into it and into his own tankard. William looked at it all, sitting up in the bed, hair awry, face muddled with sleep. "Thank you," he said at last, and came to sit and eat. Dominic noticed that he had grown adept at using his right hand, despite the two ruined fingers and thumb. He ate with his left hand, but lifted his mug with his right.

"May I?" Dominic indicated the old injury.

William hesitated and then placed his wounded hand into Dominic's whole ones. The scar was a fine white line, thicker across his palm; the two fingers were wasted, slightly, but the thinness was not noticeable unless one looked for it. Dominic traced the scar and felt William suppress a faint tremor at the touch. "Can you move the thumb?" Dominic asked.

William nodded. "A bit--just here, at the base. It lets me hold things fairly well."

Dominic nodded. "I learned the right name for it." He manipulated the joint manually, testing the range of motion. "The carpometacarpal." William's hand was cold in his own. "Can you show me?"

William picked up his spoon with the hand, his smallest finger and ring finger folded flexibly over to allow the grip.

"And so we adapt," said Dominic with a faint smile. "I am glad."

"Brother Andrew was a good physician." William's gaze was fixed, not upon his own hands, but Dominic's. "I owe him much."

"He was. I thought of him so often... I wished he could have come with me, sometimes. There is a great store of knowledge in the world, William. He would have loved to learn all of it."

"Aye." William rubbed the thumb of his left hand over the two ruined finger of his right; it had the look of a habitual movement. "He... he died quickly, Dominic." Green eyes rose to meet blue. "The plague came in the fall, a year after you left. He worked like a slave. He dinnae sleep--he never slowed, never paused. All he could do was make the dying comfortable, and he tried so hard to do that... In the winter the illness took a new turn, became a lung sickness. Those who contracted it died so quickly, there was naught to do. That is how he passed--alive and hale one day, ill the next, gone the next day but one. I buried him--they had to consecrate more ground to bury the dead. I made sure of where he was. I can take you there later if you'd like."

"Yes, I would like that." Dominic's eyes searched the Scot's face. "And what of you? How was it for you?"

"I never grew ill," William said. "By the spring the abbey was empty, and both priests here had died as well. I went from house to house, where I was called. I gave absolution--at least I had the Latin to do that." He sighed. "By that next summer it seemed the plague had taken all it would take. My brother-in-law passed, but Margaret and the children survived him. She took a place in the Pawlet household, and they went into the countryside. Then four years ago she took the children back to Glasgow. She is remarried now, to my brother's partner."

"I am glad," said Dominic, for it seemed to be the right thing to say; the words felt strange on his tongue, though.

"Yes." William blinked, looked down. "Lord Robert offered me a place in the household as well, but I said I would stay here. I kept the church. I could not go back to Glasgow to live with my brother. At least here I had a use." There was no bitterness in his voice, but Dominic felt bitter for him, felt the searing loneliness of years in this cramped, small life, bent with grief. First rage and then emptiness...

"I should have come, even though I thought you dead," Dominic said low.

"No." William shook his head. "I... I wish you had not come now. I have nothing to give anymore. I am not here, not really."

Dominic stood up; his fury would not let him be still, and he felt William's eyes on him as he paced the tiny house. "You are here, William. And what is more, I am here. I am here and I will not let you go. I will not let you go on like this." He turned on him, pity and anger and self-loathing churning in his gut. "Come with me now--you have served! Leave this place, come with me and see the world."

"I will not," William said softly. "I cannot. I want for nothing here... I would only hurt you. Again." He added the last word in something like a whisper, and Dominic nearly screamed for it, for sheer frustration.

"Then I will stay here with you, and I will make you see what life is." His voice was low, dangerous, and he saw William recoil from it, saw the flash of his tongue, nervous, darting out to wet his small mouth.

"What is life, then?"

"Many things, none of them so terrible as you imagine." Dominic came closer, looked down at William. "Speech, and laughter, and joy. Disappointment, sometimes, and pain. Pleasure, too."

Something flickered in William's face at that, there and then gone. "I thought you were dead," he said. "I let even my memories of pleasure fade. I cannae remember it anymore."

Dominic knelt before him, and the movement was not submissive, it was overpowering--he saw the panic in William's eyes, felt his own desire rise to meet that fear. "I thought you were dead," he said, his voice hard and sharp. "I took pleasure where I could, and never felt it true or right. I never felt anything like to a single kiss we had shared." His eyes bored into William. "I will make you see."

"You cannot, Dominic," he said. "Once sight is gone, you cannot make a blind man see."

Dominic smiled at him, the sharp bright smile of a predator. "I am the physician here, thank you." The silence stretched between them, wire-tight; the town stirred outside the rough walls of the house, but neither man moved for many heartbeats.

"I have work to do," William said abruptly, and he pushed back his chair and stood. "I have people I must visit today, those who cannae come to Mass."

The healer faced him for a long moment, then nodded. "Is there a hospital here?"

William shook his head. "The monastery at Salford has one, but folk here do as they can with the local herbwoman and home remedies."

"And you are the only churchman?"

William nodded cautiously. "Until a new priest comes. I sent word as soon as Father Michael died; I expect someone soon."

Dominic reached for his cloak. "So the people you will visit, they are the sick, are they not?"

"They are." William lifted his mug and drained it. "Are you coming with me?"

"I will do what I can while I am here," Dominic confirmed. "Until we leave." It was not a suggestion, and the deacon's face stiffened, but he did not protest when Dominic followed him out the door, into the clear, cold day.

~*~*~*~

Andrew's grave was beneath a tall chestnut tree. A small, rough-hewn stone cross stood at the head of it. Dominic sat down on the soft sparse grass, just greening from the winter's brown. William had left him there and gone to the church; in the absence of a priest he had taken to speaking the Mass once a day, in the late afternoon. The townspeople who could came; the others came on the Sabbath. Often, he told Dominic, he went through the service alone. "Do you want to come?" he had asked, and Dominic shook his head. He thought William wanted to be alone. So William had brought the healer here before disappearing, and now Dominic sat and plucked up the grass blades, and spoke to Andrew.

"I wanted to talk to you so much, when I first reached Salerno. They are hard teachers there, Brother Andrew--I can't tell you how often I missed your kind way of teaching." Dominic smiled to himself, fingers busy on the delicate greenery. "Then when I heard you were gone, I did talk to you. But of course you know that. Or you don't, but it doesn't matter either way, I suppose. The man said you should have been sainted, did you know? In my head I sainted you, just so I could pray to you.

"I can't seem to break the habit of praying. I suppose when you grow up with something like that, you probably can't leave it behind. Even when you don't think it works. Even when praying hurts worse than not praying." Dominic felt the cold damp of the earth beginning to creep up through his cloak, into his haunches. He did not mind it. "I think I should be praying now, for William. He needs prayer. He needs... something." Dominic looked down at the little knot of grass he had made. He rolled it in his fingers and lifted them to his face, smelling the faint sharp scent on his fingertips. Life. "I think he is still in there, somewhere. If once I could break him open..." Dominic smiled suddenly. "Yes, I know. Very arrogant of me. With only our few months together to look back on, and nine years between... But it doesn't matter.

"It doesn't matter at all. He is still mine, and I am still his, and I know. I know everything about him. And if I can once get through to him, then he might begin to heal."

Dominic fell silent then, and spent the next hour watching the sunlight fade, feeling the evening shadows rise about him and the chill slowly seep into his bones.

"I'm finished," came William's voice behind him. Dom looked up and back; nodded and climbed to his feet. They walked back to the house almost companionably. "One of the parishioners gave me a pot of stew. And Isabel Miller asked me to tell you that her lad's fever has gone down."

Dominic grunted acknowledgement. "Good. That's the first step."

"Mmm."

William stirred the fire up and Dominic fetched the plates and poured ale into their mugs. "You are a good physician," the deacon said when the food was mostly gone.

"Thank you," said Dominic, surprised. "I... I had good teachers."

"Yes, I have heard of Salerno," William replied. "But there is more to it. You have authority, and you are kind. You were always kind... where did you learn the authority?"

Dominic smiled. "When I left I was a novice in a backwater order, fumble-fingered apprentice to a healer--where would I have learned authority? At Salerno I worked alongside men and women--ah, yes, there were women there, intelligent, witty, incisive women--who had begun learning healing from fourteen years on. Some of them grew up in the school there, almost. Some, like me, traveled there to learn. All of them had, as you say, authority. A few even had kindness." And he grinned.

"You had friends there." William looked--did he? Yes--he looked envious, and Dominic felt a small prickle. Hope, perhaps.

"Yes." He spoke casually. "Of course I did. I still do, I believe."

William shifted, playing with his spoon. "And did you like it there?"

"Yes, it's very beautiful." Dominic described Salerno--the steep coastline, warm weather. The medical school and town, the nobles who came to bathe there and be treated, the society that had sprung up around them, of entertainers and courtiers and merchants.

William listened carefully. "You sound as though you want to go back there."

"I would love to go back there someday." Dominic paused. "I would love them to meet you, and you to meet them."

William's eyebrows came down, level and straight, and he looked at the younger man from beneath them. "Dominic."

Dominic smiled at him. "Of course if you'd rather stay here, then we can. It's cold, it's rainy, it's ugly... but it's home. And I did love it, before. I could learn to love it again."

"Dominic."

Oblivious, Dominic picked up both bowls and took them to be cleaned. "There's no hurry. We don't have to make a decision right now."

"You cannae--you should no'--" William sighed and sat where he was, head in his hands.

"Have you a needle? There's a rent in my hose that needs mending, and my needle is dull."

William fetched a sewing basket, and neither of them spoke again that evening until they bid one another good night.

Dominic lay on the floor again. He heard William settle to sleep, breathing slow and steady, and tears rose to his eyes. He was tired and frightened and frustrated... Patience and time. They were all he had, the only tools to hand. He would wait, he would wait forever if need be, because even this single day in William's company--uncomfortable, awkward at times, infuriating, tentative, strange--had been better than all the empty years, the times without. Patience and time.


	9. Chapter 9

  
_Si sustinuero infernus domus mea est in tenebris stravi lectulum meum._  
If I wait, hell is my house, and I have made my bed in darkness.  
Job 17:13

In the days that followed they settled into an uneasy routine. Dominic usually woke before William, and so he would prepare food for the day and stoke the fire, warming the little house. William visited his parishioners in the mornings, tended to the church in the afternoons. Dominic accompanied him, even to the manor house, where Lord Robert welcomed him. Dominic did not tell the lord that he had once lived at the monastery; he simply said that he was a traveling physician and had stopped in Manchester to rest, and been taken in by the hospitality of the deacon. Lord Robert nodded, and quizzed him for outdated gossip of the noble families, and told him about his gout. Dominic gave him what tales he could, and told him that he must bathe once each day in water as hot as he could stand, to ease the ache and cleanse the body of foul humours. He gave him several harmless herbal teas as well, and came away with a new pair of boots.

William nearly laughed at Dominic's smug expression. "And what were those herbs?" the Scot asked him.

"Soothing things, mostly," Dominic said. "Comfrey, chamomile, St. John's wort. Lord Robert has quite a choleric temperament. The herbs may not help the gout terribly much, but they will at least calm him. Never underestimate the effect of the placebo medicament," he said to William, eyes twinkling. He was pleased with William's animated face.

As though sensing that he was venturing into dangerous territory, William's expression closed off a bit. _The mask_ , Dominic thought with chagrin.

Their nights varied. Sometimes William would ask Dominic questions; the Scot's face never quite lost its anxiety, but he listened quietly as Dominic told him about his years away. He had arrived in London only to find the city in a state of panic due to the plague. It took him nearly a year to get out and take ship to the mainland; then another four months to make his way to Salerno. "I could have stayed in London to learn," he admitted. "But I wanted to at least find out whether I could study at Salerno before I came back for you. And then while I was there..." His voice faded and he looked down at his own hands on the table, twined around each other, skin over the knuckles stretched white.

"Dominic." William's voice startled him, and when Dominic looked up it was with eyes full of tears. Damn the man--he did not want William to see him cry. But William's face was as open as he had yet seen it. "You must not blame yourself for what happened here, and that you were not here. You dinnae know. No one did."

" _You_ blame yourself." Dominic's voice was hard, though his eyes were still enormous, still wet with tears. William's stricken face swam in the firelight. Dominic could not stand it, could not stand the grief and helplessness he saw there--he stood up, knocking his chair backward, and strode from the house, into the night.

That happened, some nights.

There were daily joys--seeing William. That was joy. His messy morning hair, the careful manner in which he shaved himself with a dull blade (until one night Dominic sharpened it to a fine surgical edge in irritation), the neat, clever movements of his hands and the quickly hidden gleam of a smile--joyful. The work Dominic could do to help the townspeople was satisfying; he did not plan to stay, did not let himself become attached to any of them and told them, one and all, that he would move on soon. But the help, and the rough thanks he received--satisfying.

There were daily irritations, too. Most of all that William would not break to him, would not open to him. The irritation of the chilly weather, of sleeping on the floor--though it was not something new, he was not particularly fond of it. Sometimes he thought William was close to opening. Sometimes the humour sparked between them, the wit that had once connected them as deeply as desire ever had. But always William swerved, backed away. For every smile they shared there were hours of distance and careful, wary observation. Dominic sometimes felt an irrational urge to break him physically--he dreamed at night of hurting William, ravishing him, backing him to the wall of the ramshackle house and bruising the sweet, soft mouth with his own. He woke from these dreams with a throbbing cock and a guilty conscience. William had been hurt enough. Dominic would not, could not. That was not the way.

His desire for William was a constant torment. Dominic knew now, in a way he hadn't nine years ago, exactly what he wanted to do to the other man. Exactly what he wanted William to do to him. He had not been celibate during the years apart; there had been three partners, two men and one woman. All had been kind and loving. Had Dominic never met William, any one of them might have satisfied him, consoled his loneliness. But it had never been enough, and so one of the liaisons had ended in anger and grief, two in friendship.

And now Dominic was in close physical proximity to the one person he had longed for for nearly a decade, and unable to touch him for fear of frightening him, for fear that he would drive William to some foolish, impassioned declaration of aversion. They brushed against one another in the house sometimes, and Dominic felt each contact like the cut of a knife--stinging awareness, followed by numbness and, later, pain. William seemed to react in the same way, but more fearfully.

So Dominic did not try to touch him, tried to give him space until the tension relaxed, or snapped--something, something that would allow him to kiss that mouth, to hold William's face between his hands, give him love. Run his hands over William's body, pierce him, bring him to an edge of pleasure so fine he would sob in relief when finally he climaxed... Yes, Dominic knew exactly what he wanted to do to William.

And he couldn't, and he lost count of the times when he sought solitude to give himself some relief, of the nights when he went to sleep with a stiff, aching cock. Twice in two weeks he awoke and found he had come in his sleep, something which hadn't happened since he was much younger. He could not remember the dreams that led to that embarrassment, but he knew William's name was on his lips as he shuddered to wakefulness.

So the days went by.

"When will the new priest come?" he asked one night.

William was cleaning the plate used during the Mass. "I am expecting someone soon--perhaps in a matter of days. I sent word to the diocese as soon as Father John passed away, in January. It is March now, getting on for April. So it should be soon."

"William." Dominic kept his voice steady, but he saw William's eyes widen--like it or no, the deacon was attuned to the physician as well as he had ever been, and Dominic took some satisfaction in it, even as he wished William were not quite so perceptive.

"Yes?" William's hands faltered, then the rhythm of his burnishing cloth resumed. He looked back down at it, face carefully still.

"I want you to come with me, when the new priest arrives."

"I will not." His voice was calm. Always calm, and Dominic felt his anger beginning to rise.

"William, I would be willing to stay here if you really loved it--if you were indispensable, if you seemed to love your work. If I thought you wanted to, for any reason." Dominic took a deep breath. "But I don't believe that. Right now you do something valuable--you help these people, spiritually and physically. But you are doing a priest's job. You are not a priest. Come with me and find some calling that speaks to you--singing, or healing--you could do it as well as I do, you know--something. But leave this place--this town is a graveyard for you."

William was staring at him, eyes wide open, blazing in the most open feeling Dominic had seen him wear since he arrived. "How do you dare to speak so? _You_. You have always known what you want, but that does not give you the right to cast what I do aside."

"So you love being a deacon so much?"

"I--I do love it," William said. He looked down at the silver in his lap, and then up at Dominic, still angry. "I never told you I would go with you. I never even told you that you could stay here. How do you dare to come here and tell me that I should leave?"

Dominic jumped to his feet to pace, feeling a strange exhilaration sweep him, even as he tried to rein in his spiraling frustration. "How do I dare? I will tell you. This place is killing you! You have said to me that you are dead, that you are a ghost, but it is not true. You were sleeping, you were unconscious, but you are waking now and if you stay here you really will die, you _will,_ William, and I will not have it! If you love being a deacon then come with me and be a deacon somewhere else, somewhere that does not drown you in grief, somewhere that does not choke you with sorrow. Come with me to Italy--they have churches there, and the Latin is the same. Or France--Montpelier. I would not be separated from you again. I will not." He stopped before William. "Come with me, when you can. Do not make me beg you."

William looked up at him, eyes wide and frightened, mouth set and angry. Dominic leaned down and grasped his face, not knowing quite what he meant to do. "William," he said softly. "William, do you not know? I will not be separated from you again. I love you." He felt William's hands, those small, strong hands, come up and lock around his wrists--so strange, the uneven grip of his left and right hands, but both powerful, yes--try to force them away, but Dominic leaned down and kissed William, hard, square on the mouth. He felt William's mouth open to speak against his own and stopped him, yearning forward with desperate heat.

For an instant William opened to him: lips parted, breath exhaled into his own; the narrow fingers around his wrists slackened for that heartbeat. But just as quickly William twisted cruelly at his bones and thrust him away, breathing hard; he rose up as Dominic fell back, the silver clattering to the floor, and for just a moment Dominic thought William would hit him--the smaller man draw himself up in rage. Before the impression could settle, though, William had frozen, glaring at him, slumping, the rage swiftly locked away beneath a stony mask, and Dominic felt an absurd, giddy desire to spring upon him once more, wrestle him down, provoke him.

He stopped himself.

They stood staring at one another, both drawing quick breath. Dominic shifted, straightened; he drew his hand across his mouth. "I am sorry," he said. " _Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa_." He dropped his eyes, bent his head. "I should not have surprised you--forced you."

"You should not," William said; he was all dry agreement. He bent to pick up the chalice, the dish. "You would do well to remember it." Dominic glanced sharply up at him. Again, always: that serene voice which did not match the eyes at all, which echoed some other William. The physician wondered which spoke truth.

"I shall," he said, and bowed his head again, a gesture of acquiescence.

~*~*~*~

Translation of the Latin

My sin, my sin, my most grievous sin. 


	10. Chapter 10

  
_Dic nobis quando ista fient et quod signum erit quando haec omnia incipient consummari?_  
Tell us, when shall these things be and what shall be the sign when all these things shall begin to be fulfilled?  
Mark 13:4

Dominic awoke deep in the night and lay still, trying to decipher what had brought him to wakefulness. A noise outside? No, it was another wet night, and the steady drip from the eaves had not changed. Then what--

 _William._ He sighed, and Dominic could hear him shift in the bed, a tiny rustle as the rushes adjusted. Dominic blinked sleepily at the banked coals of the fire and felt himself slipping back into slumber, but...

But did not, for William moved again, and then Dominic heard it, a soft, rhythmic whisper, the slide of skin upon skin, and he knew, as surely as if he had seen it himself: William was pleasuring himself.

Dominic struggled to remain motionless, eyes wide, staring into the fire as his own member stiffened so quickly it hurt. He stopped breathing altogether, listening for the sound of it... Yes. A constant, gentle sound, and then it quickened. Dominic closed his eyes in an agony of desire, only to picture it upon the inside of his eyelids: William's hand--god, his ruined right hand or the whole left hand, what would Dominic not give to know--his hand wrapped around himself, stroking and stroking, sliding loose dry soft skin up and down, the foreskin slipping back to reveal the flushed, drum-taut head... William sighed again and Dominic nearly jerked in response. The sounds slowed and then sped, and with each change Dominic gave the tiniest of shudders in sympathy; he wanted so badly to touch himself, but feared any movement that might tell the other man he was awake; and so he lay still, and tried not to gasp, and listened avidly, intently, as the speed of William's strokes increased again, as the sound changed from a whisper almost to a slap, and as William drew in a long, sobbing breath--still so quiet, so quiet the rain almost covered it--and then lay still, the only noise his breathing and the slow drip of perpetual rain.

Long moments later he heard William shift again, a stealthy movement, and decided that probably the Scot was cleansing himself. Dominic lay still for a long time after that, wide awake, and once he was certain that William was sleeping, he brought himself to his own climax with a few rough strokes, eyes clenched shut, hips thrusting into his own fist as he pictured William's calloused, slender fingers curled around his cock.

~*~*~*~

It happened again the next night. And the next.

~*~*~*~

On the third morning William was awake before Dominic for the first time since the physician had arrived in Manchester. "You must hae been tired," came the Scottish lilt, and Dominic sat up, yawning.

He nodded and stretched, tilting his head to one side and feeling his muscles tense and release. Only then did he turn to look at William. He looked... different. Perhaps it was just that Dominic usually watched the change from sleep to waking. He looked alert, and his face was softer, somehow... Or perhaps not. Dominic could not tell.

It was raining yet again, and the house was silvery with the light of it. Dominic stumbled to the corner to relieve himself in the pot and then sat at the table. "Who are we seeing today?" he mumbled.

"Lord Robert sent a message--he would like you to come and see him today."

Dominic closed his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair. "D'he say why?"

"His gout; apparently the rain is getting to him."

"A'right." He opened his eyes and looked at the bowl William placed before him. "Thank you." He ate for a few minutes with the concentration of a man who has hardly slept. "Are you coming with me?"

William nodded. "The lady of the manor would like a Mass spoken in the chapel. I don't usually, but..." He shrugged. "You are going, and there is no one else needs me this morning. So yes, I am coming."

Dominic nearly smiled, but he did not; he finished his food, swallowed his ale, and the two of the them left the little house.

The day was a strange one. Dominic had the lord soak in a steaming tub for a long time, and then he massaged him; when Lord Robert retired, feeling better and sleepy from his treatment, Dominic utilized the tub and his authority and had a bathe himself. It was a habit he'd come to enjoy in Salerno, whose hot springs had first drawn those seeking healing. The harsh lye soap he used tingled and stung his skin and scalp, but when he climbed out of the water he felt clean and new.

William had left already, going to the market to buy their supper, and Dominic went back to the house to organize his herbs. He was low on several, and wanted to know what he should buy before the market closed that afternoon.

Someone was there.

A brown-robed man sat at the table. He stood when Dominic entered, towering over him. "William Boyd?" he asked.

"Nay," said Dominic, startled. "I am his friend, a guest in the house. Dominic, a traveling physician." He offered his hand and the priest pressed it briefly.

"I am Father Sean," said the man. "The diocese has sent me to take over duty here at St. Mary's."

"Oh." Dominic realized his mouth was hanging open and shut it with a click. "Well. Ah... William should be back soon--he's just gone to the market. I was going to go there myself, I just needed to check my supplies..." He stopped himself from talking with an effort and smiled. "Excuse me," he said, and stepped past the priest to slide his medicine chest from beneath the table.

"Of course, don't let me disturb you."

Dominic gave him a distracted smile and began to sort through his herbs. Nettle, mugwort, betony, feverfew... He could not hold a thought in his head, gave it up as a lost cause. "Do you need anything from the market?" he asked the man, standing again. "I must get there before it closes..."

"No, I'm well." He looked around the small house. "Where do you think I shall sleep?"

Dominic's eyes widened. "I have no idea. I'm sure the deacon knows, though--there must be a rectory."

"No doubt." The priest smiled nervously and Dominic tried not to hate him as he stepped out into the rain again.

He found his friend at the far corner of the market, standing in the tanner's stall. "William!"

The older man started guiltily and turned--strange, Dominic thought, but dismissed it-- "What is the matter, Dominic, is someone ill to death?"

"No, no, of course not, I'm sorry." The physician glanced at the tanner and gestured William away, lowering his voice. "The new priest is here."

William's eyes widened. "Where is he?"

"In your house. I left him there, I wanted to come and tell you..." _Too soon, too soon_ , his mind shrieked at him. The conversation of three nights ago came back vividly, and Dominic knew without asking that it was in William's mind, too. But he looked calm as he walked toward the church with Dominic.

"Thank you, of course. What is his name?"

"Father Sean. He wanted to know where he would sleep. He seemed well-spoken enough, perhaps a bit nervous." Dominic stopped William with a hand on his arm, ignoring the premonitory tremor this caused them both. "Where _shall_ he sleep?"

"There is a rectory, just on the other side of the cemetery. It isnae ready, though--there are no rushes on the floor, and the mattress certainly needs to be re-stretched." William's high brow furrowed. "Perhaps he can sleep at the manor house. I shall need to introduce him there anyway." He nodded his head, one time. "Yes." He looked sideways at Dominic. "Will you please tell any who come for the Mass that it cannae be heard today? I am sure the new father will hold Mass tomorrow, though."

"Of course." Dominic was troubled--what was going through the Scot's thoughts? He sighed to himself and did not ask.

At his house William was all smooth courtesy, asking the priest whence he came, offering him ale or bread. The two of them were gone soon enough, and Dominic went to sit in the vestry of the church in case anyone decided to come to Mass.

No one did, and after a while Dominic wandered into the low stone building. The day had been cool but not cold, even for all the rain, and it was peaceful and dim beneath the stolid ceiling. He had not come in except on Sundays since he had come to Manchester; the church was William's province, in his mind anyway. Now the physician sat on the floor near the altar rail. Not praying--not really. Drifting. Trying hard not to think about what he had said that night, about how wretched the priest's timing was. He needed... He needed William to know that, no matter what he had said or done, he would not leave him. Any ultimatum that even implied otherwise was a lie. Dominic could not part from him, ever. It was as simple as that... and William must know it.

Dominic leaned over and laid his head on his arms. He stayed like that for a long time.

"Dominic?"

He stirred. It was dark now. The only light came from the candles in the chapel, and the small altar lamp. "I'm here."

He could hear William's light step through the rushes on the floor. "Are you well?"

"Yes. I'm sorry, do you need help in getting the new priest settled?" His voice sounded strange to him, detached.

"Nay." William was standing beside him. Dominic could see his legs, clad in light woolen hose, and his soft leather shoes. "He is to stay at the manor for the next little while, until Lord Robert feels the rectory is fit for him."

"William--"

"Dominic." The deacon knelt beside him; still Dominic did not look at him. "Have you been sitting here all the while?"

"Yes." Dominic suddenly longed for touch--simple human contact. He sighed, and stared ahead at the altar, wishing he could lean sideways against William's warmth. "It's very peaceful here."

"It is." William seemed content to sit on his heels, close beside Dominic, breathing quietly. Very close.

"William, I have to tell you something."

"Nay, you do not." The older man's voice shook, just slightly, and it frightened Dominic more than anything he had ever heard. That William's voice should not be calm--

"I must!" Dominic turned his whole body and looked straight at William, finally. "What I said--I did not mean it. I will not force you to leave. We can stay here. As long as you allow me to stay by you. We should be here."

William smiled, a curving quirk at one corner of his mouth. "Do you say so?"

"Yes. I am sure you can help the new priest settle in; you could teach him a lot, I know."

"That is a shame, then," William said.

"It is a--what? Why do you say so?" Dominic felt confusion strip him. He was terrified suddenly, though he did not know why.

"Well, it is a shame, because I just told Lord Robert and Father Sean that I would be leaving in a few days. And so it would seem a shame to go back and disabuse them of the idea."

Dominic sat still with his mouth open, looking at William. "Where are you going?" he whispered at last.

The smile curved, and Dominic watched every minute detail of it--how the lines between mouth and nose deepened, and the green eyes narrowed; how William's small, even teeth glimmered just barely visible between his pink lips. "I dunnae know. Italy, perhaps. Or France, I think you said."

It was not terror, after all. It was joy.

"William," he said, and he felt something inside him tremble. William looked at him, still sitting on his heels.

"I am here," he said simply.

"Why? Why now?" Dominic was shattered, broken--made whole.

William moved. Put out a tentative hand to touch Dominic's arm. It seemed to reassure him. "I am tired," he said. His green eyes were steady, still sad but with something new in them. "I am tired of being alone, tired of trying to deny that I love you. Tired of pretending you are a dream. Tired of not being with you, not being complete when completion is here before me. Offering itself...

"I think I am a fool, Dominic. I gave up hope so long ago.... For two years I kept it, even in the face of the plague--I lied before, when I said I lost all hope so quickly. I held my faith long after--three years, even four. But never a word, never a letter, never a message... I lost all hope finally, and then when I saw you on my doorstep my heart could not bear it, could not bear to believe it." His eyes glittered with tears, and he looked at his own hand upon Dominic's arm, the thin wrist protruding from rough brown wool; the long, elegant fingers of Dominic's hand.

"I sent letters," Dominic said. "Three, over three years." He swallowed. "I should have come myself."

"No." William shook his head. "Or yes, but who knows if you could have? I knew you wanted to go to Italy, I could have pursued you. Should have, would have, could have, if. It is past, let it lie. Let it sleep. I am awake now, and even if I am a fool, I am a fool with something to hope for. Dominic. My love." He looked away then, and Dominic saw how painful the joy was for him, like the tender new leaves that burst from the branch; like the thin, delicate skin that covers old scars. They sat in silence for long moments, bound by a looping ring. Future, past, present. Together.

"William..."

"Yes."

"May I kiss you?" Dominic could feel himself flush, the prickle of tears in his nose and cheekbones. He reached to touch William's cheek.

"You may," said William, eyes rising to meet Dominic's, and he was smiling as the younger man leaned forward.

William's lips had become ghostly in Dominic's mind, the memory of the kisses they had shared in a long-ago summer rekindled by the last weeks and that one rough encounter three nights ago. Still, kissing them was much different than looking at them, and Dominic felt himself shiver all over as he clasped the older man's face in his hands and touched those sensual lips with his own. William's smile curved against his mouth and then softened, opening a little. Dominic ran his tongue along the satiny inner curve of his lush lower lip, and felt William shiver, too.

It gave him a sense of power and desire so strong that he paused where he was, eyes closed, mouth against the other man's. "William," he murmured.

"Dominic." The healer felt tears against his cheeks. "Forgive me?"

"What is there to forgive?" Dominic leaned away, opened his eyes to see the stricken face of his lover. "We both suffered terribly, we both assumed the other lost. I should have come to find you--that is the real truth of it." He closed his eyes for a moment. "It is over now."

William was looking at him solemnly. "We will be together," he said, and it was half statement, half question.

"We will. And someday one of us will die, William, and go ahead where the other cannot, but at least we will know--we will be together when that time comes."

"Yes."

They sat looking at one another for a long time then. "What are you thinking?" asked William at last.

Dominic warmed under his gaze, smiling and looking away. "I am actually wondering how long I will have to wait to lie with you, William Boyd."

William laughed at that, and it sounded rusty and unnacustomed, that laugh, but it was true and real and sincere. "I think you have waited long enough, and I have. I think you need only wait until we are safely in my house and the door latched. The deacon's house," he corrected himself. He shifted and stood. "Are you coming?" He offered his hand to Dominic.

"I don't know if I can walk," Dominic confided, but he could and he did.


	11. Chapter 11

  
_Guttur illius suavissimum et totus desiderabilis talis est dilectus meus et iste est amicus meus._  
His throat most sweet, and he is all lovely: such is my beloved, and he is my friend.  
Song of Songs 5:16

"I am afraid," William said. They sat on his bed, facing one another.

"I would not hurt you," Dominic said. "There are a hundred ways we can pleasure one another." Lust was curling up his spine as he looked at the man before him, and he reined it firmly in. Time enough later for unbridled passion. This night they would move slowly. He had built the fire up recklessly, and the little house was as warm as could be; a small leather flask of flax seed oil was tucked between the frame and mattress of the bed. "If ever you want to stop, tell me--we have every night for the rest of our lives."

William laughed--it sounded easier this time--and leaned forward until his breath puffed softly across Dominic's jaw. "Then I shall tell you nothing, and let you ravish me though it hurts. Once I thought the rest of my life was forever; now I know it can be the blink of an eye."

William kissed Dominic.

Slow pressure, the brush of one hand along Dominic's neck and the other at his waist, tugging him closer. Mouth opening, head tilting and a steady, certain searching. William's tongue slid into Dominic's mouth and the younger man felt the blood hum in his veins as his cock, already half-hard, responded and stiffened. He moaned into William's mouth.

They undressed one another with hasty, heated tenderness, kissing everything that cloth revealed.

For Dominic it was communion: to touch William, to give him pleasure, explore this body he had dreamt about for nearly a decade. Collarbones like wings, softly furred chest and small pink nipples--ah, William gasped and bucked at that, and Dominic pressed him down into the yielding bed with unyielding hands, ran his tongue firmly around the sensitive skin, tasted the tiny puckering nipples. Soft pale belly and the narrow line of hair from navel to hardness, William's erection springing from the soft nest of his pubic hair.

It went quick, so many years of desire pent into those first moments--William's high voice crying out and his hands, scrabbling at the linens, gripping them as Dominic's slick mouth slid down over tighthotrigid skin. The older man's sharp-boned hips thrusting up into Dominic's mouth, again and again, until he spilled with a desperate groan, voice fading away into nothing but breath, heaving gasps as Dominic swallowed his seed.

"Your voice is not calm at all," Dominic said with a grin, and William rolled onto him, seeking his erection within his hose, small hand (his left, Dominic noticed with a gasp that was half-laughter, half-arousal) insistent and firm on the healer's cock as he pulled it free and began to stroke it. "I have been far too slow, far too calm," William said, smiling back as Dominic pushed into his hand. The physician tried to pace himself, tried to make it last, but William lay curled around him, mouth warm and eager on his, hand busy and firm and quick... When the Scot bent his head to look, and whispered what he saw-- "So beautiful, Dominic, so beautiful to have you in my hand, to feel your desire, see you begin to arch with it--" Dominic came, right then, strangled words falling unfinished from his lips as nine years of want and need and frustration exploded into that quickly working hand and Dominic sobbed with the sheer relief of it. "William..." he gasped, and felt the older man's mouth tight over his, drinking the word...

They drifted for a little while, sated and sticky, warm and drowsy.

But after some time of this, William's hands began to explore Dominic. He undressed him, cleaned him lovingly, and, as Dominic had done before him, sampled the various textures and tastes offered up to his mouth and hands. Dominic's shoulders and chest were kissed and licked, and the curve where his hipbone sloped inward was suitably admired. William's silence seemed to have been defeated--he whispered, murmured, hummed a commentary on all he saw, tasted, felt, wanted. It was that last item that pushed Dominic back into active lust. He sat up and rolled William onto his back, then braced himself over the other man, looking down at him.

"You want me... inside yourself."

"I do." William's eyes were wide and dark in the firelight, his mouth soft and vulnerable. Dominic bent to kiss him.

"It might hurt at first," he said.

"I know that much, Dominic." William regarded him unblinkingly. "But then, after a little while, I think perhaps it will not hurt. And you will be inside me, and all round me... I do want that." And he licked his lips, just a quick swipe of his tongue.

Dominic reached for the flax seed oil. "The first thing we need is this," he said. William nodded, watching as Dominic sat back onto his heels and opened the little flask. The oil was clear and thin, and Dominic poured a bit into his palm, then rubbed it over his fingers.

"Will that be enough?" William was trying hard not to sound apprehensive, Dominic thought, and smiled at him.

"Nay, not nearly," he replied. "This is just to get you used to the idea."

He leaned down, reclining beside William. The older man half-turned to face him, and Dominic used his sticky hand to draw one leg over himself. "William, sweet William," Dominic said. He could hardly stop smiling. He kissed William's mouth, tender and sweet as he remembered it now, and slipped his hand down over the Scot's belly to massage his cock, which stiffened beautifully beneath his ministrations.

"Mmm," William hummed, eyes slipping shut as he relaxed completely. Dominic watched his face as he stroked his erection and then slid his hand lower, massaging the loose, soft skin of his sac, cradling him, rolling him in gentle fingers. "Ah," said William, and Dominic felt himself growing hard--perfect trust, perfect beauty within that simple exhalation. Dominic slid his hand lower, rubbed gently and firmly at William's puckered entrance.

"Is that all right?" Dominic asked.

"Yes." William's face was relaxed, serene: closed eyes, half-open mouth. "It feels good."

"Good." Dominic circled it again and again and then slid the very tip of his finger within. William did not move; his expression did not change. Dominic withdrew, circled and pressed and teased again, then repeated his intrusion, this time to the first knuckle of his finger. William's mouth pursed. "Breathe slowly," Dominic whispered. "Keep your body soft." The ring of muscle within William was tight, tight and hot around his finger, and Dominic thought briefly about how that would feel around his cock, how William might feel, how good it would be... he drew in a shuddering breath and slid his finger in further, past the initial resistance, into that place that felt almost empty, silky and deep and dark... "Still all right?" He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against William's.

"It feels strange," William said softly. Dominic opened his eyes; William's forehead was furrowed.

"I can stop," Dominic offered.

William's eyes flicked open and he smiled. "I dinnae say it felt bad."

The younger man choked back a giggle. "Ah. Well then I shan't stop. Because..." his voice went husky, "it feels wonderful to me. And I want to feel it with all of me, I want to feel you beneath me, feel you around me. We can always stop, but I do desire it, William Boyd. I do." William's brow went smooth, his green eyes seemed to glaze; he nodded, and Dominic slid a second finger within him.

He tensed, slowly relaxed. His mouth moved, and Dominic heard a faint whisper:

_Fulcite me floribus stipate me malis quia amore langueo..._

He twisted his two fingers gently, reached with the longer for that place, the one spot he knew would make William truly long for him... there it was, and he smiled with pure happiness as William shuddered, his voice murmuring on, disconnected except for the breathiness of it as Dominic stroked that sensitive, tender spot:

_Leva eius sub capite meo et dextera illius amplexabitur me..._

Dominic slipped his hand beneath William's neck, moved himself closer. Slid another finger in. William moved, allowed his legs to fall further open, and Dominic felt his arousal, hard and heavy against the tendons of his forearm, the sensitive crook of his own elbow. "William, oh yes, god..."

_Vox dilecti mei ecce iste venit saliens in montibus transiliens colles..._

"More, William?" Dominic bent his head to kiss his lover's mouth, chin, neck. He stroked his fingers gently in and out, felt William's breath hitch and then steady, his voice drop to a whisper.

_et dilectus meus loquitur mihi surge propera amica mea formonsa mea et veni..._

"Oh god, yes," Dominic moaned. He sat up hastily and unstoppered the flask, spilling the oil into his hand. "Just, please, god..." He spread the thin stuff over his own throbbing erection, let the rest trickle into the tantalizing cleft of William's buttocks, massaging carefully, sliding two fingers back in, feeling the tight ring of muscle but no resistance, and William's murmured soliloquy never ceasing, threading into his mind and taking him, maddening him.

_Pone me ut signaculum super cor tuum ut signaculum super brachium tuum..._

Dominic turned William, pressed behind him. "Are you ready, my love? Tell me." He ran one hand up the long, smooth curve of William's back. Kissed his shoulder, dusted with pale freckles, and then the nape of his neck, feeling William shiver against him. Nudged that tight, puckered entrance with the drum-taut head of his cock, slick with oil and his own need.

_Surge aquilo et veni auster perfla hortum meum et fluant aromata illius..._

"Love," Dominic murmured, and pressed inward, one hand guiding his erection, the other firm upon William's hip. He went slowly, so slowly, letting William tense and then relax, feeling the effort that relaxation cost. Finally he was completely within William, driven nearly mad with the need to move, with the tighthot squeeze of it, the idea of it, murmuring his own words into William's shoulder and neck, counterpoint to William's steady, delirious recitation:

_In lectulo meo per noctes quaesivi quem diligit anima mea..._

"Ah, and you found him, you found him, William, you found him," Dominic said, almost a sob, and he began to move, hearing William's hiss of in-drawn breath, the sudden tightening of his muscles. Dominic could not, would not stop. "My beloved," he choked out, and William pushed back against him suddenly, stretched beside him, arched so that Dominic was suddenly deeper.

"Love," William groaned, and Dominic thrust in earnest, reaching for that sweetest of places within William's body as the Scots voice, lilting even in another language, went on, eroded beneath Dominic's merciless rhythm:

_et dilectus meus loquitur mihi surge propera amica mea formonsa mea et veni..._

William shuddered beneath Dominic's weight as the other lay half upon him, and William's arms reached above his own head; he bent his elbows so that his hands, crossed at the wrist, lay behind his own head. Dominic growled, a low, unconscious sound, and shifted to grip them with one hand.

_surge amica mea speciosa mea et veni..._

William's voice faded, but still wound on, disjointed, growing desperate, as Dominic groaned and strove within him:

_aquae multae non poterunt extinguere caritatem..._

He gasped as Dominic's other hand slid around his hip, sought the erection that lay upon his thighs and grasped it, stroked it, felt William push himself into his slippery grip, gasping:

_vulnerasti cor meum..._

"William, oh god William, please..." Dominic pressed his mouth to the slick skin of William's neck, struggled not to bite him and then did, as gently as he could, hearing William's voice suddenly lose control, spiral upward, poetry and calm and detachment gone as he cried out: "Dominic, Dominic, Dominic love ohlove," and came, bucking so hard in the younger man's arms that Dominic nearly slipped from his body, but did not. For William twisted first forward and then back, driving his buttocks into Dominic's pelvis. And Dominic climaxed with that slamming backward thrust of William's, came with a breathless cry, hands flexing, one on William's wrists, the fingers of the other digging into the dangerous inward curve of his hipbone.

They lay tangled together, breathing hard, Dominic draped over William. Finally he shifted, not wanting to crush him. He withdrew--William did not make a sound, but he shivered, and Dominic drew the coverlet over them both. They were quiet, then, drowsing in the firelight.

Dominic opened his eyes with an effort; lifted his hand to trace the pink marks his teeth had made upon William's neck. "Love," he said, an apology, and kissed them, laving the skin with gently with his tongue.

William reached for a corner of the linen and cleaned himself, back to Dominic still. He lay back again and sighed.

"Was that a happy sigh?"

"You may judge me," said the Scot, and he turned over beneath the quilt until he faced Dominic. His face was smooth, almost blank. But he looked younger, somehow. Softened.

"You've a boyish face, William Boyd." Dominic traced his lips with one finger; ran it along the line of his jaw, down his nose. Smoothed both eyebrows from the bridge of his nose outward.

"My mother used to tell me stories of the fey folk," William said. "She said I had a pixie face, a changeling face."

"So you do," Dominic said. He lay his hand along the curving cheek, beginning to be rough with stubble. "You have enchanted me from the moment I saw you."

William's green eyes darkened, and he closed them for a moment, then opened them again. It seemed to cost him something, to do so. "I am afraid," he said for the second time that day, and Dominic loved him for his courage.

"I know," he said. "But tell me why."

The older man's face twisted, his eyes filled with tears. "You have made me feel again, and it hurts, Dominic."

"Worse than not feeling?" Dominic's eyes grew wet as well.

"No." William shivered again, and pressed closer to the younger man, pushing his head down into the crook of his neck. "It does not hurt worse than that. But it does hurt--it is raw. I have to relearn it. And I may not be good at it... Also I am afraid that this is not real, that I have dreamed it. I dreamed things like it, you know. Ever since I first saw you on my doorstep sixteen days ago, the dreams have come back." Dominic wrapped his arms around William protectively. "I dreamed for a long time after you left, you know."

"I did so, too."

"It was when I finally stopped dreaming that I felt really... gone. Dead." William's voice did not betray his panic, but his body did, shaking against Dominic's. "I thought it a sign. A portent that you were dead, too."

"Oh, William," whispered Dominic.

"And now I am afraid because I cannot go back, and I am afraid to go forward... I will need help, my brave love." He sighed again.

"I will help you, William." Dominic rocked him. "And you shall help me."

"What do you need help with?"

"Do you think it feels any less dream-like to me?" Dominic kissed William's soft, damp hair. "You will be required to kiss me quite often, to touch me every minute of every day, to ravish me and love me and enchant me until it doesn't matter if this is real or not."

He felt William's smile against his collarbone. "Ah." Strong arms snaked around his waist. "Well, I can be prevailed upon for that service, I believe."

"It will be hard, William--I know that. We have both been alone for a long time. But nothing will ever persuade me to leave you again--no argument, no rift, nothing short of bodily death."

"Amen," William breathed into his neck, and Dominic felt the warmth of that breath steal into him, heating and releasing all the places where cold had held him so long, so long... They fell asleep entwined in the fragrant darkness of the little house.

~*~*~*~

Translations of Latin

_All text is from the Song of Songs, Douay-Rheims edition of the Bible._

Stay me up with flowers, comfort me with apples: for I am ill with love...

His left hand is under my head, and his right hand shall embrace me...

The voice of my beloved, behold he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping over the hills...

Behold my beloved speaketh to me: Arise, make haste, my love, my dove, my beautiful one, and come...

Put me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thy arm...

Arise, O north wind, and come, O south wind, blow through my garden, and let the aromatical spices thereof flow...

In my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loveth...

Behold my beloved speaketh to me: Arise, make haste, my love, my dove, my beautiful one, and come.

Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come...

Many waters cannot quench love...

Thou hast wounded my heart...


	12. Epilogue

  
_Loquar et respirabo paululum aperiam labia mea et respondebo._  
I will speak and take breath a little: I will open my lips, and will answer.  
Job 32:20

William's hair was longer, now, but still not long, and his face remained clean-shaven. The wind lifted his locks and he smiled, bracing himself against the roll and pitch of the sea.

Dominic beside him leaned forward into it, eyes as blue as the sea, open wide and bright as he looked for familiar landmarks. "There," he said, and William looked where his finger pointed.

A small town, houses of wood and stone tumbling down the shore to the harbor, where junks and barks much like their own rocked at anchor. "It is beautiful," said William truthfully, and felt Dominic's arm slip around his waist, his hand warm upon the skin of his hip.

"You will love it here," Dominic whispered into his ear. "There are hot springs, like the ones we bathed in in Leukerbad, in the mountains. The people are fascinating, and the church will welcome you with open arms. There is no place like Italy for singing or for religion."

"And yet the sailors do not seem bothered by the fact that your hand is under my tunic," William murmured back, half-smiling. Gulls cried on the wind and the musty stink of fish, the tang of salt whipped over them.

"The sailors are carefully paying no attention, my dear," Dominic laughed quietly. "And if they are shocked by this, think of how horrified they would be if they saw what we did in our room, alone at night on shore. Yet I think they know, or at least suspect." He winked at William.

"Dominic. You are a wretched soul," William said, and he leaned back, into Dominic's embrace, watching the shoreline change as they drew slowly toward Salerno.

"I am the happiest of souls," said Dominic.

"And I." William sighed, and closed his eyes. He feared the town, no matter what Dominic said--feared new people, new places. The months of traveling had slid by in a blur of new landscapes, strange voices, unfamiliar tongues. Discretion and adventure and exhaustion, and all of it left behind as new roads opened before them.

Against all the changes was set Dominic. Dominic's laughter, his unembarrassed fumblings to communicate in every strange language, his easy authority as he helped those whom he could and comforted and grieved for those he could not. Dominic's face, voice, hands, mouth. Touch and scent and the sound of his voice in their loving, as he claimed William ever more deeply, ever more passionately, or responded to William's equally ardent claiming.

And William knew that nothing would change that. Whether Salerno was facile in its welcome or treacherous, Dominic would remain constant, and he himself was as fixed in the younger man's orbit as the magnet to the pole.

" _Ne adverseris mihi ut relinquam te, et abeam quocumque perrexeris pergam ubi morata fueris et ego pariter morabor populus tuus populus meus et Deus tuus Deus meus_ ," William said.

Dominic tightened his arm around William's narrow waist. " _Quae te morientem terra susceperit in ea moriar ibique locum accipiam sepulturae haec mihi faciat Deus et haec addat si non sola mors me et te separaverit._ "

The quay drew nearer, and they moved back from the rail of the boat to sit by their trunks, out of the way. "You know it is a woman says that to a woman," Dominic commented, and William nodded.

"I do." He looked at Dominic's eager face, at the angular jaw and snub nose, the soft beard and sensuous mouth, and William took a deep breath. Air rushed into his lungs and filled him. Not the first such breath, and not the last. "I wonder if she meant it as surely as I do."

He leaned and kissed Dominic's cheek, soft and quick, and felt it as natural as the breath had been, and as necessary. Dominic took his hand and they sat quietly together in the sun and the wind and the safety of the other's presence, taking breath.

~*~*~*~

Translations of the Latin

Be not against me, to desire that I should leave thee and depart: for whithersoever thou shalt go, I will go: and where thou shalt dwell, I also will dwell. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.

The land that shall receive thee dying, in the same will I die: and there will I be buried. The Lord do so and so to me, and add more also, if aught but death part me and thee. (Ruth 1:16-17)


End file.
